Orphan Spirit: A Memoir

By Maria Star

Author Maria Star developed in a schizophrenics womb for nine months. After Maria was born, she was given to the Childrens Aid Society and subsequently experienced life in six foster homes before being adopted. In Orphan Spirit, she narrates the story of her life and how her early abandonment affected her, including her childhood and subsequent psychological treatment and healing.

In this memoir, Maria tells how she sailed through childhood but the onset of adolescence opened the way for the buried trauma to come to the surface. She shares how she scrambled through twenty years of dysfunctional relationships, addictions, chaos, a cancer diagnosis, and the birth of two children of her own.

Through the stories told in Orphan Spirit, Marias hope is that her journey will provide insight and comfort to others. She wants anyone who has been debilitated by shame, isolation, and secrets to know they are not alone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491744840

Maria Star

Maria Star lives with her husband and her Jack Russell dog in a small town in southern Ontario. Three of their children are their neighbors.

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Copyright © 2014 Maria Star.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-4485-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-4484-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014915970

iUniverse rev. date: 09/16/2014

Contents

Letter to My Readers

Part One Beneath the Fantasy

Chapter 1. Ann

Part Two The Darkness

Chapter 2. Ann to Maria

Part Three A Two-Decade Search for Love

Chapter 3. Herbert

Chapter 4. Cyril Fletch

Chapter 5. Anderson

Chapter 6. Laura, in her own words

Chapter 7. Ann

Chapter 8. Roger

Chapter 9. Rob

Chapter 10. Clay

Chapter 11. Freddy

Part Four The Light

Chapter 12. Maria

Chapter 13. Laura, in her own words

Chapter 14. Maria

Appendix

This is dedicated to the one I love.

This memoir is for my estranged granddaughter, Carla L. Francis Lockett. I miss you. This is my gift to you. I hope there are many puzzle pieces for you in these pages. I hope there are some answers.

Letter to My Readers

I developed in a schizophrenic’s womb for nine months. When I was born, I was given to the Children’s Aid Society (CAS). I experienced life in six foster homes before being adopted. My new parents gave me everything they thought a child needed and should have. I sailed through childhood. With the onset of adolescence came the onslaught of the entire buried trauma. I’ve read you can’t possibly remember things that happened when you were just a baby. I believe we have body memories as far back as conception. My feelings of rejection and abandonment were as deep as my very being and they formed my entire experience of this world. All my relating stemmed from the understanding that I was not lovable. I was not wanted. I scrambled through 20 years of dysfunctional relationships, addictions, and chaos and had two children of my own. My firstborn suffers from mental illness and addictions. After a 10-year estrangement, we reconnected and began a journey together. I had been diagnosed with cancer and wanted one last chance to parent my firstborn, accessing maturity and providing a foundation of safety, trust, and love. In a family support group, I was asked, along with my daughter, to give a two-hour presentation to mental health and addiction professionals sharing our journey and experiences. We agreed and at the end of the event were approached by several people asking us if we would consider writing a book. I decided I would like to try to write a life review. My intention and hope is that my path will provide insight and comfort. I want anyone who has been debilitated by shame, isolation, and secrets to know you are not alone. I also hope that I can change even one person’s idea that he or she was born defective and that the damage is irreparable. I have changed the names of most of the characters to protect both the guilty and the innocent. I have included an illustration of the many relationships presented in the style of a family tree. There are so many I wanted my readers to have a page they could return to for clarification.

The initial relationship is with my mother, Ivy. I was her only child. I never knew my father, and my guess is neither did my mother. My birth name was Maria. My name was changed to Ann by my adoptive parents. In my search for identity, I took my birth name back. I am legally Maria today. I am integrating and have a lot of integrity.

Part One

Beneath the Fantasy

An ideal beginning in life, to me, is two loving parents, perhaps brothers and sisters, extended family, stability, security, love, nutrition, safety, and plenty of physical resources if possible.

Chapter 1.

Ann

To anyone looking at my childhood from the outside, it would appear almost idyllic. I had a totally loyal and devoted set of parents. Mom and Dad had married late in life. They were both teachers. My mother lost her mother to death when she was very young. They had a large family, and she and her older sister raised the rest of their siblings. Mom wanted to be a nurse and open a home for homeless children with her sister. Her sister disappointed her by getting married and having several children of her own. Mom took care of her siblings and her father until he remarried. It was 1922, and it was a sin and shame to live with the opposite sex without being married. He married his housekeeper.

In 1928, Mom went to teacher’s college where she met my dad. Their hearts were in the country, but the jobs were in the city, so we lived in a town in southern Ontario. Every Sunday, however, we took car rides to the country and visited aunts, uncles, and cousins. Mom’s family also got together at least four times a year at reunions. They would all meet in an enormous rented hall. They would have a drawing of names after each event, determining the foods each was responsible for at the next gathering. We met at Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter and had summer picnics. Many members of this family played musical instruments and sang, so the events were always filled with music. Mom’s youngest brother (with lots of help from the others) made an outdoor skating rink on one of the back roads on the corner property. We would all skate, playing tag and crack-the-whip for hours, with music blasting out from speakers. When we were cold or needed a break, there was a shack with a wood-burning stove and hot chocolate. Back at the hall and after the large main meal, someone would always start a food fight. We sang, skated, played, ate, and laughed at these events.

On Sundays, we all went to church no matter what. For Easter, the girls got brand-new Easter bonnets. It was in the early 1950s, and hats were required for church. It was a sign of respect. We sat down to three meals a day together after saying grace. We visited relatives every Sunday. Every summer, one at a time, my brother Jack, sister Diana, and I would get to spend two weeks or more at one of my aunts’ or uncles’ farms. Aunt Florence and Uncle Russ had a room in the attic with an authentic feather bed. The entire mattress was feather tick. You jumped in and disappeared. We couldn’t wait to get a chance to sleep in Auntie Florence’s feather bed. She loved country and western music and played it nonstop all day long from the time she got up in the morning until she went to bed at night. She would whirl me around the huge kitchen table dancing. She would shove her dirty dishes into a cupboard and wait until she couldn’t store anymore and then have a dishwashing morning. It was so different from my home. We weren’t finished eating before the sink was being filled to do dishes. Everyone worked. That was what they did. There was no music or dancing. Aunt Florence loved animals and named every single one of the cows and pigs that were born. They loved her. They were like pets. They would come to meet her when she came to feed them. She would cry every time one of them was sold to be butchered. I can still smell the farm. I loved the smell of pig feed, cattle, hay, and the barn cats.

They had a wonderful old dog. We would play in the hay in the barn. Uncle Russ had made a rope swing, and we would fly through the air from the lofts into the hay piles. We’d also play in the grain bins. They were so soft and smelled divine. Aunt Florence had rows and rows of all kinds of berries that matured at different times. I would sit in the patch of whatever was ripe and gorge on sweet berries. I don’t remember anything but hot, delicious sunshine and lazy days that seemed to go on forever. There were freshly made pies cooling on the windowsills in the warm breeze. Several cats would be basking in the sun on rungs of a ladder leaning against the side of the house. These memories make my heart ache. I think the feeling is nostalgia.

Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Ted had three children. Living with them as well was my uncle Amos. He had been kicked in the head by a horse and almost died when he was just a little boy. He was very slow and definitely not all there. He was quiet and gentle, and I loved to sit with him. My aunt made him eat by himself in a different room at a little table separated from the rest of us, who all sat at a big table together. I felt really badly for Uncle Amos and didn’t understand why he had to sit and eat by himself. It bothered me so much that it was difficult for me to pretend he wasn’t there. I still don’t know why they did this. I must have asked. I guess I got some flippant, off-the-cuff answer that I knew was all I was going to get.

They had a dairy farm, and the kids were to clean the milking machine. There were layers and layers and layers of thick cream to clean off with a spatula and save. Next came the washing of the pieces with hot, soapy water followed by scalding hot water. All the separate pieces had to be dried. It was a big job. They loved country-and-western music too, and we would listen for at least an hour before we went to sleep. All the kids were in the same bedroom, singing our hearts out to all the popular songs of 1956. (I loved everything the singer Brenda Lee ever sang, and she is the first person I hear in this memory.) They also had chickens, and every morning, the kids would collect the eggs. I loved the musty smell of the chicken coops. I was a little upset when they would kill a chicken for supper. Uncle Ted would hold its neck over a stump, and with one fell swoop, its head would be off. It would be running like mad in circles around the barnyard without a head, a bizarre creature with blood spurting out of the top. The kids would laugh and laugh. I was horrified but said nothing. They were probably laughing at me too.

Uncle Ted made a ball diamond. He had three girls, and they loved sports. Hockey and baseball were constantly being played. We would all go out on the field, all the neighbourhood children would come, and we would play ball! A goodly portion of the neighbours were our cousins. Most of the original family members didn’t go far from home to raise their own families. This had been the original family home. On the weekends, the adults would join us. It was so much fun. I was an excellent shortstop. I loved to run. (Field day at school, I would place first in every short 100-yard dash.) If I ever hit the ball, I usually got to home base.

The house was huge. It had two distinct sides to it, each with a large set of stairs. They no longer used the one side, and we would play hide-and-seek in the old vacant rooms for hours.

Dad’s older sister was my aunt Muriel. I adored her, and to this day, she is one of the angels watching over me. She was beautiful to me. Dad’s family had a history of dying young. This was the total opposite of my mother’s side, whose members seemed to live forever. Dad used to say the only way to get rid of a Kenner was to shoot one. My grandfather lived well into his hundreds, and Mom’s aunt Katie, whom she was named after, was 108 or more when she died. My dad lost his father before I was even there, and his mother died shortly after I came on the scene. Aunt Muriel married a man my family made fun of and criticized behind his back. They had two boys of their own and adopted a little girl named Arlene. Arlene and I would play and play together. I remember these people being a lot less well off than all the rest of us. To enter their home, one had to go through a bad-smelling large old shed that had everything under the sun in the walkway. For supper, they would present a rather modest-sized roast, a few vegetables, and then large bowl after large bowl filled to overflowing with mashed potatoes. I would stare in amazement at the amount of potatoes on their plates. I realize now this was the staple of their meal. They grew potatoes, and there were plenty. They had an old record player. I don’t know what they were called, but it was a spool or cylinder that slid on a roller and had a large handle with a needle, which would play the spool. It had to be wound up in order to be played. We played with it a lot. They also had a player piano. This was a piano that played by itself. A big tune roll with written notes on it would roll by as it played. There was a big box on the wall that was a party-line phone. You could tell if the person calling wanted to speak to you by the ring (two long, one short, etc.). They hadn’t yet switched to the dial phone.

Aunt Muriel was the only person I ever remember asking about my adolescent anorexia. She said to my parents with horror on her face that she believed I was dying. My mother shrugged as if to say, Well, so be it. I’ve done everything I can do. I’ll never forget the concern for me on Aunt Muriel’s face. It touched me deeply. I have a sad memory of Arlene. We were visiting, and she had a friend over for the afternoon. She and the friend ran away from me giggling. When I returned to the house, everyone wanted to know why I wasn’t outside playing with the girls. I told them what had happened. My aunt called Arlene in, and she denied it. I was thrilled because I thought I had misunderstood, but when I went out again, they did it again, and I got the message. I didn’t go into the house again. I didn’t want Arlene to get in trouble and then dislike me even more. To this day, I don’t know what was wrong. Our relationship has been nonexistent since that day. I was afraid of telling the adults again. It didn’t feel safe in any way to suggest to them there was still a problem.

My dad answered the phone one day. It was one of the only times I saw my dad cry. His sister had passed away. Arlene lost her mummy at a very young age, and no one understood like I did that this was the second mummy who had left her. I would have loved to be able at the time to relate to her on this level, but I knew it was not okay to do so.

The first home I remember living in was on Charles Street in Stoney Creek, Ontario. I was only four years old. It was 1952, and I can still remember what the house looked like inside and out. It was a little three-bedroom bungalow on a quiet suburban street filled with young families and their pets. I remember lazy summer days with kittens and puppies, lawn sprinklers, and bicycles. We had a tire tube on a rope hanging from a large tree for one of our swings along with a play gymnasium. I remember go-cart racing down a nearby hill and playing dolls and red rover, tag, and London Bridge. Dad built us stilts, and we had such fun dressing up with them on and appearing 10 feet tall. There were fruit trees and vegetable and flower gardens everywhere. The neighbours had a television before we did, and once a year, we got to go over and watch the Santa Claus parade. Howdy Doody was the first show I ever watched on our brand-new black-and-white television set.

My father was made principal of a new school, and we moved. He built us a brand-new split-level home. Dad was a wonderful carpenter. Mom taught grade two at the new school. The five of us attended together. Between home and school, the entire family were together 24/7. I loved this. I was never alone. The home had a basement that was attached to the garage. It was a brand-new clean space, and I was allowed a menagerie of hamsters, guinea pigs, turtles, and gerbils in the room my dad used for his woodworking. The second half of this large space was where my brother, sister, and I put on many plays. We did Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. We had records telling of the story in song, and we put up a quilt curtain and rigged it to go up and down. Cindy Cinderella ran from the ball, as she heard the clock strike in the palace hall, rang throughout the house. We made popcorn and lemonade and sold them to the neighbourhood kids while charging them admission. I was in heaven. I was quite the little ham and loved the attention.

Mom and Dad got me a guitar. My sister took piano lessons. I played naturally by ear. She could not. She would play her lesson for an hour trying to get it right, and I would sit down right after her and just play it. I mention music a lot, as I believe it saved my sanity and my life over and over again. Lyrics in music were everything to me. I would hear my thoughts and feelings expressed in the lyrics and tune of a song, and I would be captivated if not obsessed. I felt connected.

My parents bought a cottage on Georgian Bay. It was near most of the extended family. We went there every school break and almost every weekend. We now had the best of both worlds. One of the drawbacks to this was not being able to sustain relationships in the city. There were many cottages close to ours where kids lived. I made friends with a lot of them, and we are still friends to this day. I went skiing on the Georgian Peaks in the winter and played and swam with my friends all summer. In the winter, Mom would place bricks in the open fireplace and get them piping hot. She would then wrap them in newspaper and put them in all of the ice-cold beds to warm them. I loved the feeling of the hot bricks while smelling the wood smoke from the fireplace. I think Mom and Dad rather enjoyed rustic living. We drew our water from Grandpa’s well and carried it to our cottage. Mom had an old wringer washing machine and hung all the clothes on the clothesline. She made her own bread, and I even remember her making soap. She made taffy and cooled it in strips on the snow.

The cottage had flowers everywhere around it. My dad built the kids a bunkhouse. We nicknamed it the Bunkie. We would have overnights and play records in the bunkhouse, dancing and spilling out onto the lawn. Life as a child at our cottage was magical. There was sun, sand, swimming, snorkeling, diving off of huge Gull Rock, water-skiing, and boating with Lucky, the family dog, who sat at the helm, ears flying back in the wind. She would race for the boat if she saw anyone anywhere near it.

Someone would be going in to the nearest little town daily, and we kids would pile into the car to go to the library, the confection store, the A&W (where the waitresses came to your car on roller skates with great tunes pouring into the parking lot), and the ice-cream parlour. My cousin’s father owned the ice-cream parlour and would load up our cones until they nearly toppled.

My uncle had the cottage right beside ours. They had two boys my age. This was my aunt Helen and uncle Harry. I loved my aunt Helen, and she really liked me. She was very patient and kind to me. We would talk for hours together as she baked or tended to her home. She loved to swim, and every single morning, rain or shine, we would see Uncle Harry and Aunt Helen arm in arm, heading off to go for a swim. Aunt Helen wore old-fashioned bathing suits. I thought they were so cute and she was beautiful.

Mary and Mia came from Toronto every summer. Their cottage had an attic crow’s nest, where their parents had set up a quaint and cosy reading nook. It was so creative and full of character. It looked out over the bay. Their parents were teachers as well. We would read Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys books until we had gone through the entire series. Every cottage had a tree fort and a bunkhouse for the kids. We’d take turns sleeping over in the different bunkhouses. We had picnics in the forts and played all kinds of childhood games, like cops-and-robbers or pirates. When it rained, we made popcorn and played board games all afternoon. Many nights, someone would start an enormous bonfire and we would gather around with music blaring from speakers on the lawn and toast marshmallows and wieners, eat popcorn, and drink pop. I loved horses and always wanted one. It was explained to me that our lifestyle would not support a horse, and I understood. They did take me often to trail rides though, and I just loved riding the horses. I could go like the wind. I loved the smell of the horse barn. I liked how hot and stuffy it was, and I liked to rub down the sweaty horses and groom them. The parents would often allow all of us kids to sleep out in the open under the stars in sleeping bags. Sometimes,