Sunshine through the Shadows: A memoir to age 18

By Lori Anniset

"Sunshine through the Shadows" is an unforgettable memoir that shares the author's journey through early life. She was born in 1960 in a small midwestern town with repressive social judgments towards non-nuclear families. Throughout the book, she shares the experiences of growing up through challenges, while also recognizing the happy times. Hope, forgiveness, and education prevail in her journey of self-discovery and growth as she progresses into early adulthood.

The backdrop of these personal stories involves a society still entrenched in conformity. Having unmarried parents with a unique coping style, the author experienced unique challenges and adversity. Her parents hid the news of her birth, and sometimes even her relationship with them. This brought sadness and pain into her life. However, she still managed to find silver linings and light through the darkness. The author was enriched by having a few caring people in her life, and her experience of being raised in both suburban and rural settings with nature was a guiding force for her development. Also benefiting from her parents' passion for horses, a foundation was established for her to develop curiosity and seek both knowledge and independence.

This is a powerful book about choosing to translate the many challenges of secrecy, financial woes, and family drama, into a positive outlook. For the author, the process was a difficult, but it was aided by an understanding of the scope and shapes of love, and the power of hope and forgiveness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098372088

Book preview

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Copyright©2020 by Lori Anniset

Author may be contacted at loriLanniset using gmail.

Print ISBN: 978-1-09837-207-1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-09837-208-8

TITLE CHOICES ALSO CONSIDERED

Congratulations (No, Maybe, Yes)

Costumes in the Skeleton Closet

The Waning Secrets of a Charade Upbringing

The Mixed Upbringing

The Deceptively Storied Upbringing

The Why of Me

Establishing Identity

The society one is born into never completely changes; lingering negative norms still exist, even if softened, and the re-orientation of truth is often unsettling. In recognition that those impacted in this story have their own paths and may have little or no direct understanding of these events, names and some places in this writing are fictionalized to provide privacy.

The skeleton in the closet is to be avoided. But what if you are the skeleton? And eventually are joined by four others?

Contents

In the Beginning

Pamela and Leonard

Grandparents and Early Country Life

Life in the City

Tragedy and Changes

More Changes

Move to the Country

Transfer to a new life story

Country Work

Horses—Intensely

More things to Balance

It Was Just Too Intense

The Sun Rises

Epilogue

In the Beginning

In the beginning, an eleven-year-old child got polio. Torn from the freedom of the farm for six months, lying sequestered in the hospital, paralyzed, she was unable for a time to move anything but her fingers. Her personality was revealed, altered, and shrouded by this life-changing event. Eventually released in a wheelchair, she ascended to crutches and grew strong riding her beloved pony. By her early teens, she could walk limpidly, unassisted. Regular medical checkups occurred until a newbie asked after her table examination, where are your crutches?

I walked in, she replied in a flat, somewhat scornful tone—why did the all-important doctor not know she could walk, having just examined her? Impossible, you don’t have enough muscle mass, he said. She thought him a fool and never went back, maintaining that fierce sense of independence and I’ll do what I want attitude forever, both her strength and downfall. Her life was simply defined in the 1950s—a country girl with a hard-working German Father and a Finnish Mother. Regarded, typical of that time and generation, as a cripple, she unconsciously winced every time the term was used her entire life. She accomplished her fair share of farm chores, had a bright and curious mind, and exuded passion for many things, including horses. But her naivete and polio influenced self-image created vulnerable holes in her outlook. At the tender age of seventeen she joined a horse-riding club and became mesmerized by the attention of the owner.

He originally just looked out for her—trading up her horses, encouraging her skilled, enthusiastic horsemanship at rodeos he held. She became a keen barrel racer, adjusting for her withered right limb by ratcheting up the right-side stirrup, and scored high in the rankings. Gregarious and engaged in fun activities, she blossomed into an attractive young woman. But physical maturity coupled with a nagging low self-esteem stemming from polio effects didn’t empower her personality to say no to the inappropriate attentions of the charismatic and charming owner of the stable, thirty-one years her senior. The owner, John, loved being the center of his stable/horse training enterprise, and of her youthful adoration. Married, with four children, one younger than her, he also had a kindly heart at the core, wanting initially to help out this young lady with her horse. He could identify horses’ physical ailments and correct anything with equine behavior, but not his own. And she didn’t believe anyone could ever desire a cripple. She didn’t recognize her worth, and was deeply attracted to his dancing blue eyes of approval at her riding, competitive spirit, and passion for life.

Laurel’s first job after graduating with honor from high school involved driving fifty miles to Dearborn to work at Kresge’s 5&10 dime store. After seeing her menial pay, her Father stated the obvious: Transportation is costing more than your earnings. It prompted her to apply at the local university, well regarded as a teacher’s college, and she did well in this field of study. Her quick mind and ability to relate to those who struggled translated into encouragements and expectations of performance. There is no such thing as can’t, became a favorite saying of hers that bolstered her students over what was to become a long career in education. She lived at home on the family farm during her early college years, still making the weekly organized club rides held at John’s stable. He worried about her riding back in the dark; his stable was about six miles from the farm, so would sometimes drive her home, boarding her horse overnight. The drives grew plentiful and slower. The inevitable, in-excusable, untenable, and dismayingly disruptive took place. They fell madly, genuinely, recklessly in love.

By age twenty, rapidly progressing with her education, she was officially living and student teaching in Pontiac. Life was busy and as their rendezvous time grew sparser, they became more intense. Conception occurred at a weekend rodeo in Sparta, in the early fall of 1959.

American culture in that era was still steeped in strict family protocols, expectations, and quick to impose social alienation on those straying from its prescribed norms. The implications of relational misconduct affected not only family and friends but also employment and church participation; even access to state aid could be outright rejected or severely jeopardized. These punishments were acutely swirling in the box Laurel found herself in, wracked in turmoil. Quiet, staunch, hardworking farming parents who were pillars of the small Lutheran church and the small community, coupled with the professional edicts of the educational boards which specified by contract behavior to be morally above reproach, led to depressing options for her to consider. Abortion was a whispered, shameful word; not legal, and not affordable.

John was separately going through the dissolution of his horse training stable and rodeo operation located in southwest Wayne County. The swampy, wooded, and cheap land was attracting scores of families from the south, hoping to secure jobs in the burgeoning auto industry. John didn’t cotton to the newcomers and decided to sell out as all his four children with his wife, Vern, were now adults. He reverted to a familiar line of work—industrial painting with a specialty in steeplechase. Steeplechase painting involved climbing high towers and poles (such as flag poles) using a swing harness and bench, inchingly ratcheting the pulley ropes to the top of the target, repelling down as the painting was completed. John was fearless in his physical energy, confident in balance, and wiry strength. Tragedy rarely struck but once earlier; as a steel girder framer in his forties, high above the earth, he and his partner agreed to mutually balance out a free-hanging steel beam, supported by two cables. On the count of three, the partner failed to mount the beam and John slid off the lopsidedly askew surface, a long drop down, hitting his head. Ironically, it was a steel plate patched into his cranium; a miraculous recovery with no lingering injury—even the hair grew back, but the smooth plate under his scalp remained perceptible to the touch. Now at age fifty-one, he remained a high energy, confident-with-risk type of man. And he was completely without a plan or viable option for dealing with a twenty-year-old pregnant girl.

John and Laurel shared a mutual approach to problem-solving: do nothing until a crisis demanded immediate, spontaneous action. Nothing changed during pregnancy except for Laurel’s size. The easiest way for her to hide the pregnancy and get emotional relief was to eat. Always twenty or so pleasantly rounded pounds overweight, she ballooned to 250 pounds. She would later say it matter-of-factly: Well the reason I am so fat was to hide being pregnant. Hide she did, from parents, friends, and the school system where her student teaching status would transition to early elementary teaching. Exposing a pregnancy out of wedlock would have resulted in immediate dismissal. She limited contact with her parents. Given their built-in stereotype attitude that Laurel, being a cripple, was different, allowed them to never directly question her weight gain. It would not have been considered polite.

The baby was born on July 6, 1960. To no one at first. Laurel, confronted with an actual baby, took the option of putting it up for adoption—whisked away, out of sight, and without a name for a six-week consideration period. How were these babies treated back then? Stigmatized even as a newborn? Cuddled? Nurtured? The answers are forever speculative; open fate to the whims and instincts of myriad caretakers. At six weeks, Laurel was forced to make a decision. She finally went to her Mother, saying, I have a baby. Confused, her Mother said, when? Well now, was the angry retort. Angry that her mother never caught on to the reason behind the weight gain, angry that she was befuddled, and, using anger as a shield, her frequent defense mechanism. Laurel felt her parents should have caught on—to her secret intimate relationship with John, who they knew, to the pregnancy itself. But it wasn’t in their personality or culture to suspect such things.

Aune, her mother, was like