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Posted by Reverend Deborah Gilbreath
June 18, 2012 -
#books
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738 views
My Mother came home from the mental hospital in the spring of 1963 when I was still in the first grade. A very loving Christian aunt, named Imogene, had moved in and cared for us while Mother was away. She did not want to see our family come apart because her own husband deserted her and she had to place her 5 children in the local Baptist Orphanage. I was so excited that Mother was coming home, but when I saw her she seemed strangely distant. She called us all into the living room and said “Kid’s I have to tell you something very important. There is no God and there is no Santa Claus.” I screamed “Yes there is, I saw Santa last night at the store” and she said “That was your Daddy dressed up as Santa”. She went into the kitchen to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and my little sister and brother followed her. They were only 3 and 4 years old. “Don’t listen to her, she’s crazy!” I shouted, but everyone ignored me. Shortly after that the newspaper said “God is dead” so I really felt abandoned and spiritually dead.
We all went to see my Dad’s parents regularly and they always were delighted to see the children. Mawmaw and Pawpaw was what we called them. Mawmaw always hugged and kissed us, gave us a cookie and told us that God loved us. We like to be at Mawmaw and Pawpaw’s house, but they would not let us watch Elvis Presley movies because they said it was a sin. However, Elvis was too powerful of a draw and we watched him at home on our television. That was our first taste of sin and it seemed alright.
Mother stayed in her room reading everything from Hitler to Voltaire and from Jung to Freud. She brought a book home from the hospital called “unusual Sex Practices” and I read the book when she was across the street visiting the neighbor. I was only 7 years old, but that set me on fire with sexual fantasies. Mother had told me that Jesus wouldn’t love me if I touched myself in the genital area, so I began to resent Jesus. We never went to church anymore anyway.
The elementary school that I attended was very nice red brick with individual classes with glass windows and a door to each classroom. I felt ashamed when I saw the 2 room school for black children while on my way to Mawmaw and Pawpaw’s house. Martin Luther King was marching and everyone was very much afraid as we gathered around the television. John F. Kennedy was the President and Mother dressed like Jackie Kennedy and looked like Liz Taylor. She was extremely beautiful, yet emotionally distant. We were let out of school one day because the President had been killed in downtown Dallas, our home town. When I got home Mother and our neighbor were sobbing hysterically. We watched the news and saw our own father, still a policeman, searching through boxes in the School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that killed Kennedy. We all felt ashamed that Dallas had killed Jackie’s husband. Now God and the President were dead and we lost Jackie as our leader of family life.
My school may have been nice in appearance, but it was very oppressive. We were never allowed to talk or socialize, we did not have recess and people were paddled regularly. My Dad’s rule was that if you got a spanking at school, you would get one at home as well. I kept quiet at school and made sure I did not get a spanking. Mother was pregnant again and she was very upset. I was thrilled because I had been praying every night that God would give her a new baby to love. I thought that would heal her, in my childish mind.
The next few years of elementary school were pretty glum except for the Beatles coming onto the scene. We all got a Beatle haircut and the boys followed me home singing “She love you, Yea, Yea, Yea.” I was crying, so Mother called their mothers and they got in trouble. That made me glad. We made it through tough financial times and occasionally the utilities would be cut off for a while. Mom tried to work as a Medical Secretary or a Practical Nurse, but most of her money went to babysitters that didn’t like us. Mom and Dad had started to drink with the neighbors and I worried that they were going to hell. I thought that I was going to go to hell too, so every night I prayed “Dear God, please don’t send me to hell.” Things did not really perk up much until my hormones started percolating in the 8th grade.
In 1966 I was in the 5th grade and my sister and I went to the local church alone one Sunday and the Pastor asked us if he could use our Mother as an example, during his preaching, of someone who did not know God. We said it would be alright and he told the congregation how he had visited our mother and that she had told him “I don’t believe in God, but maybe you can help my children.” When he gave the invitation to get saved my sister elbowed me, and I dragged her to the front of the church with me.
We both accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior over our lives. We then had some classes about what it meant to be ‘Saved’. After the classes came a Baptism and Celebration. It was like a Confirmation Service. Mother made us both beautiful Ballerina net dresses by sewing net over the skirts of some dresses she got at a thrift store. Mine was black velvet with power blue net. I think my sister’s was maroon velvet with pink net. We had to take a change of underwear with us because ours would get wet in the baptismal.
Mawmaw and my Baptist aunts all came and sat on the front pew. They were so happy that we were giving our lives to Christ. The Preacher dunked us under water and my sister said that he held her under water extra-long because he thought she was too full of mischief. After we had our hair dried and got dressed, a beautiful lady sang “He touched me and made me whole.” It was a beautiful ceremony and I really felt grateful for all that Jesus had done for me. The excitement faded with the challenges of life with no spiritual support system in the household.
