That phrase is printed on a pink T-shirt in my closet and I sometimes put it on when life presents it’s many challenges, which lately has become more often than not. Since I have now passed my 79th birthday and am on my way to the big Eight-Oh, I’m actually looking forward to whatever is down the road to be dealt with.
As a small child I had many situations for which the phrase had meaning although my parents would instead use phrases like, ”We can’t afford to get those shoes for you right now” and “Maybe next year when Daddy is working again”.
There was always a reason why we couldn’t go to see a movie, or in some cases why we only had potatoes for supper.
Then came WW2 and my parents’ divorce; another occasion calling for “Put on your big girl….”
The separation of my folks was quickly followed by the whole family being fractured beyond repair. My younger sister and brother and I were placed in the Norwegian Lutheran Childrens’ Home on the outskirts of Chicago and my older brother went into the Navy. Mom was forced to go to work to support herself. Dad came out West to Bremerton to help build wartime shipyard workers’ housing. Those were some challenging years for all of us. I had just had my 12th birthday in 1942 and felt as though my life had come to an end.
There were 150 children in this sprawling institution, most of whom were girls. My siblings and I were separated, the youngest, Larry, four, went to the boys’ dorm, my little sister, Marlene, eight, was placed in the little girls’ dorm, and I went to the top floor and became one of 14 “big girls”, ages 13 to 17.
My new dorm-mates and I referred to ourselves as Home Kids, which is what the “normal” kids at our school, (those who lived in real houses with two parents), called us. Kids were no different back in the 40s. They could still be cruel to anyone unlike themselves.
I never felt abandoned by my parents, especially my mother who came to see us almost every weekend she wasn’t working. She often took us to see our grandmother and out shopping. We got a few letters from our father telling us how rainy it was in his new town. And we got many letters and presents from big brother, Howie, who we all missed.
Most of the other kids were like me, coming from broken homes. Only a few were orphaned.
I cried all night the day we arrived and our matron, Miss Johnson, held and rocked me like a baby until I went to sleep.
They, the staff, kept us all very busy and we learned to like the strange (to us) meals served up the in the huge dining room. We all had chores to do like most kids in normal families, but instead of washing dishes in a kitchen sink we learned to load them into large trays and shove them into big industrial dishwashers. I dislocated a hip during the dishwashing job and was re-assigned to another lighter task.
For three years I learned to do a lot of things most adolescents never were exposed to. But mostly I learned to adapt, (i.e.), “deal with it…”
No comments:
Post a Comment