The Ungrateful Child

By Mary Ellen

This book is the memoir of a lifetime of abuse thrust upon a child by the one person who was supposed to protect and love her unconditionally. The Ungrateful Child tells the story of her remarkable survival.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662485039

Mary Ellen

Sharlene Smith Hagan, pen name Mary Ellen, is proud to call herself a military brat. She has lived in Florida most of her life, and she now lives in Florida, Missouri, which is the birthplace of Mark Twain. She and her husband, Warren, own and operate Florida Resort & Winery.

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The Ungrateful Child

Mary Ellen

Copyright © 2022 Mary Ellen

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-8499-5 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8503-9 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Happier Days

The Start of Change

Another Number One: Fuzzy

School

The Babysitters

Mickey Mouse

The Return

Back in Time: To Kansas

Mother Loved to Read

The Beginning of the End

The Follow-Up

Thirty Days

About the Author

A mother's love for her child is thought to be the strongest kind of love one can experience, and it forms the basis for a lifelong bond between the two. Without that bond, one goes through life feeling lost and empty, hungering for something he or she can't define, but always, always searching for the seemingly unreachable illusion.

I had a loving, wonderful bond with my maternal grandmother until it was taken from me by my mother at a very early age. I know that I loved her and wasn't able to grieve my loss without being punished; I had to suck it up and move on, even though I rarely heard from my grandmother and her family again. Mother would always run away from any verbal confrontation that she didn't agree with the outcome, and she would yank us children from a safe and loving environment to disappear without even a phone number or address so that we could keep in touch with those we loved. We learned years later that Grandmother had tried to keep in touch, but we were never given the letters she sent, or told about the phone calls she made to us. I believe the way Mother handled pain and loss in her children's lives set the standard of my coping skills, which may have later caused my need—or lack of it—in dealing with relationships in my adult life.

To this day I can cope with just about any reaction or behavior from a child, but I have very little patience with a grown man or woman who is just spoiled and self-centered, always thinking about how to get their own way regardless of how it may hurt someone else—even their own children. While raising my siblings, and later my own children, I did find the meaning of giving unconditional love without reservation. I don't believe one has to have given birth to be a loving, nurturing parent, and that the greatest legacy parents can give their children is the ability to love themselves and the self-assurance to do their very best throughout life. In making these statements, I would like to invite you to come into my childhood and understand how I became the person I am today, despite my mother.

*****

Mother was an intelligent, beautiful, athletic, deceitful, and destructive woman. She was beautiful to look at, and easily could have been mistaken for a Hollywood starlet of her day, especially Ingrid Bergman, whom she very much resembled. However, Mother had more in common with Joan Crawford and would use anything it took to open doors she wanted open. She treated most people, that is, those without influence that she could benefit from, with a superior attitude and made them feel small. She seemed to feel that unless it had to do with her career, it was beneath her to do any manual labor, for herself or anyone else, but it was from these lesser people that she hired babysitters when she thought Child Welfare might be watching her. If they were, she would need to prove that an adult was in the house when she was away, and it didn't matter what their backgrounds were, unfortunately. Mother's ambition and education kept her in influential employment, but something inside seemed to prevent her from being satisfied; while I only wanted her to be a loving mom.

My mother gave birth to me and five other children. We believed that we came from a very small family, but at the age of twenty-one I found out from an aunt, whom I had not known existed, that my older brother Ed and I actually had quite a large family which included our father, very much alive and living in another state. Mother had always told us he was dead; and now because of her lies and deceit, my brother and I had grown up not knowing that anyone cared what was happening to us. Why didn't anyone ever stop Mother? Was she really that powerful?

Happier Days

The happiest memories of my life were with my maternal grandmother, spent on Long Acres Farm in the late sixties. Nothing in Grandma's behavior compared her with Mother. She was beautiful, funny, and loving.

Grandma ran the boardinghouse for the men who worked in the greenhouses on Long Acres Farm. The men lived upstairs and had an outside staircase in the back of the enormous building that led to their rooms. Grandma lived with her children: two teenage sons and a teenage daughter, along with my older brother and me in the huge downstairs area.

Grandma cooked the meals for the migrant workers who came and went with the seasons. Some of the things I remember most are: we always had food, I knew I was loved and cared for, and we laughed. My uncles were close to my brother's age and mine, so quite often we would walk to the creek or the pond and fish through the evening. The sweet smell of lilacs in the spring were often overtaken by the delicious aromas of Grandma's fresh baked pies that were cooling in the window bays.

The highlight of the last unusually hot summer while living with Grandma was finally being able to swing out to the middle of the pond and fall off the rope into the water. The boys had always been able to fall from the rope, but Grandma thought I wasn't big enough before and she said I might get hurt, so I had to wait. I was the only little girl on the farm and the boys thought I didn't know how to fish, so they usually tried to leave me behind, except for the day I fell into the minnow pond and got crawdads in my one-piece sunsuit. That day I caught more bait than anyone, and I didn't even have a net! After that it wasn't so hard to get to go along to help catch bait or go fishing.

*****

Making mud pies outside the kitchen window while Grandma made fruit pies inside are some of the things that made my time with her a beautiful lasting memory. Later, when I would be sad because I couldn't be with her or even talk to her, I would remember how the house at Long Acres was filled with love, laughter, and good food. I remembered how at night I would crawl into bed with Grandma, or my aunt and uncles, and sleep under soft wool blankets; that is, until we found out that I was allergic to wool, and then I used Grandma's beautiful homemade cotton quilts. When morning came, I would jump from my warm bed and run into the living room to warm myself around the tall, cast-iron, coal burning stove which sat in the corner just before the kitchen doorway. Grandma would be cooking a hot breakfast for us kids as she had already been up since daybreak, and fed the workers so they could be on their way.

I was not old enough to be in school, so most of my time during the day when the other kids were gone was spent with Renee, a beautiful collie that Aunt Katy had owned since he was a puppy. Renee was like having a playmate when Katy wasn't there, but when she was home, Renee was constantly by her side. The ice cream truck driver had a crush on Aunt Katy and would come around almost every day. Most of the time, he would say he had broken ice cream bars and would give one to Renee and one to me. Renee soon began going outside to wait by the side of the road for his favorite treat. Life was grand!

On rainy days Grandma would look through the Sears catalog and find the newest clothes that would fit me. She would ask me which one I liked best and soon would measure me for a new dress, usually made from fifty-pound flour sacks that came in beautiful printed cotton, or she would make it out of one of her dresses she couldn't use any more. I didn't always want a new dress because