E7. My Father Mainly

Out by the barn, Johnny Cash echoes through the night, and a girl finds comfort in the stars and the soft nose of a cow. Nature remains a refuge where family is not.
Sadie’s story reveals how abuse hides in plain sight, how families demand silence, and how one person’s passivity can leave a legacy of loss. We talk about loyalty, how a family can prize order over truth, and how siblings learn to survive by pulling away. 
We explore why kids refuse help, why secrecy survives, and what a helpful person's persistence can still do. A locked psych ward—a place many fear—becomes a place of safety, with a boundary strong enough to hold. 

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Special Thanks to our supporters, who have made this podcast possible.

• Lucy Mathews Heegaard: Audio Engineer 
  • with music via Epidemic Sound
• Terry Gydesen: Photographer

• Polly Kellogg
• Kate Tillotson
• Dawn Charbonneau
• Jacob Wyatt
• Molly Tillotson
• Julian Bowers
• Wendy Horowitz
• Pat Farrell
• Lynette Tabert
• Laura Jensen
• People's Farm Collective
• Deborah Copperud of "Spock Talk" podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Sadie Green Story about an older adult looking back on her abusive childhood. It's a conversation between Sadie and myself, Pam Colby, her longtime friend. We are exploring how early trauma can affect a lifetime. Thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Welcome to episode seven. Hey there, Pam. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Sadie.

Father, Loyalty, And A Farm Childhood

SPEAKER_00 0:34

What are we up to today?

The Barn Song And Unspoken Distance

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Well, I've spent a lot of time on this one, but I want to focus primarily on my father and loyalty. So I'd like to start by reading a story I wrote back when I was 30. My father never hit my mother. He never smoked or drank. He worked 10-hour days, even on weekends. I see him after supper, with his slippers on, posting accounts in small wirebound notebooks, recording the cost of feed, the price of wool, each sheep, and herford cow, tracked through the pages. Sitting at the table by himself, with glasses on, reading. He still wears faded blue bib overalls and clean white undershirts. He still owns one suit, the pinstripe he was married in. And still reads the National Geographic. All those years I waited for him to notice. In real life, his passivity was part of my destruction. But even now I long to forgive him. I romanticize my image of him, his ready smile, his shyness the last time, when I visited, as he leaned against my car. He is a thoughtful, unpretentious man. But of course, this is not the whole picture. Sometimes saying to himself, as he sat on the upturned metal crate to milk the cows in the evening. Sue, sitting in the patching grass behind the barn, could hear the singing, especially on the chorus parts, where his voice rose confidently louder. Listening closely to the words was a memorizing game to her. So she moved gradually along the barnside on those nights until she stood almost in the open doorway. Around the corner, far enough to not be seen, but close enough to hear the steady streams of milk shoot into the bucket, held between his knees. One of Pa's favorite songs was the Johnny Cash tune, Falsome Prison Blues. When Sue stood outside the doorway listening to Pa, she imagined Johnny wearing a blue prison uniform in some small cell with bars on the window. She pictured the train passing by outside, with men and women in it, wearing fancy hats, and how, when Johnny heard that lonesome whistle blow, he watched them from the cell window, then hung his head and cried. Sue leaned her back against the rough boards of the barn wall and looked up at all those bright stars in the sky and wondered how this Johnny guy could kill a man in Reno just to watch him die. How could a man who had a heart to cry like that also be so brutal as to kill? It was as if two men lived inside one body. Unless the man he killed did something mean first, but just to watch him die was the only information given. The song pulled at her heart and made her sad for that man Johnny. She wished he could start over and maybe have a different life, like those folks he envied in the fancy dining car that passed him by. But the world was full of sad situations, and there wasn't a thing that could be done except try and keep ahead of the trouble one minute at a time. One night, long after milking time, when she figured everyone was in the house, she followed the row of pines that framed one side of the front yard to the apple tree and picked herself a t-shirt full of apples. She walked back along the trees and crossed behind the garage to where cows still milled around in the corral. One cow in particular adored green apples. Sue watched the big soft eyes and that wide smooth nose, gnashing at the apples as she fed them from her hand one at a time. She hummed the Johnny Cash tune to herself, then boldly sang the whole song through out loud. By the time the apples were all gone, she was in the middle of the song a second time. She turned around to shake the sticks and stems off her t-shirt when she saw a figure standing like a shadow, twenty feet behind her. It was Pa. She froze next to the fence. How long had he been there? Neither of them said a word, just stood in the yard, facing each other. She noticed his pant legs rumpled up above his unlaced boots. Then he turned away from her and walked calmly toward the house. He climbed the three cement steps, shut the door behind him, and once inside, turned the porch light off, as if she wasn't even there.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Your writing is really beautiful, Sadie. I'm wondering, as you think back on that little girl watching your father, what do you think was going through his mind? Seeing you imitating him with the song. Kind of a lot of joy in the story, too, and yet he doesn't speak.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Here I am in my sixties. When I just read it now, it was it's still painful. What was he thinking? I wish I knew. I don't have a timeline on the memories. So I'm not sure if this happened when I was still living in the house. Clearly by 11, I was outside much of the time, but uh you know, I could have been younger than that when this happened. I could have been older.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

But clearly you want him to be there for you. And he just couldn't do it.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

Yeah, it's shocking still. It wasn't his job to take care of the kids. My mother was the parent, primary disciplinarian and all that. So it was really a different time.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

It's a beautiful story in that I love the feeding the apples to the cows and singing and and watching him sing. There seems to be joy. Your childhood is not without comfort and it is not from the people, but it is from the farm and the animals.

The Dinner Table And Invisible Child

SPEAKER_02 7:32

The land, the animals, oh my goodness, I still am fond of cows. The land was beautiful. There was so many animals, wild and domestic, that were totally engaged in my life. And Mother Nature has an intimacy about it. A lot of healing happens in nature. I spend lots of time in nature and with animals. It's a crime the way we treat animals, the way we're destroying everything that sustains us with animals and Mother Earth. My father, coming in from evening chores, sets down the pair of galvanized milk pails. A cold cloud drafts around him before he shuts the kitchen door. He unwinds the wool plaid neck scarf, unbuttons the flannel-lined denim jacket, and hangs them both inside the basement door. Rolling up his shirt sleeves, he smiles sheepishly, with eyebrows raised, at my mother's back. Across the room, she is aware of him, but continues slicing bread. He washes his hands in the kitchen sink thoroughly with a bar of lava, pulls down the single raggy towel and dries one finger at a time, then hangs the towel back on its hook. He looks relaxed and satisfied after a hard day in the fields. He walks into the next room, pulls out a chair, and sits down for the evening meal. Brothers follow his lead and gather down the line of table. Ma carries in the plates of steaming food, the succulent roast, the new potatoes, and that thick, rich smelling broth. The table is already set. This warm room is like a portrait of a devoted rural family. I am standing in the background. But before I'm told, I know it's time to go. Why have I been here anyway? I am not fit to eat food with the rest of them. I glide out the door and down the stairs and disappear.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

I know this is really difficult for you to remember, but do you have any sense of what would have happened if you would have just sat at the table? Was there once a place for you that no longer existed? Did people just pull chairs together when it was meal time?

SPEAKER_02 10:17

I'm sure I sat at the table at some point. You know, I know I did in the little house. I do have memories of sitting around that table. As far as the big table, I know I was there with company. Like when grandma would come or company, I could sit at the table. And I don't remember family members ever questioning the arrangement. I think my mother just was in charge.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

What do you think your mom said to your dad or whatever? Sue's not gonna sit with us anymore, or Sue doesn't want to, or do you think she blamed it on you?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

I'm sure she blamed me. I don't know how she would have done that exactly. Some misbehavior, you know, being disobedient in some way, although we were not disobedient. Later, I associate a lot of my punishment with the clothes game. I don't know what it was exactly, but I'm sure she blamed me.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

And that's again where we have these wonderful sentimental portraits of your father, but he was at that table. Yeah, he was. And he didn't question why your mother was not gonna feed you.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

If he did, it was unknown to me.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Do you think because it was such a strict family, there was no talk? No. None of the kids would tell your grandma that you couldn't sit at the table.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

No.

Fear, Rigidity, And Family Silence

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Not even a young kid who wouldn't know the rules quite. There's has to be such rigidity in that that not any of those young kids would say to grandma who doesn't sit at the table. It makes me think, how do you keep little kids from talking? There has to be fear, not just your fear, but everybody's fear.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

I was totally afraid. She had so much power, at least in my mind, and I think in the whole family.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Maybe the way she disciplined you and she treated you had an impact on all of them in that they had a lot of fear. Yes. Nobody wanted to become you.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Yeah. And I've wondered what happened after I left, because she had all that rage. Where did that go? It doesn't just dissipate. What do my siblings, what have they gone through? I remember going back to visit as an adult, and my brothers would stand along the wall, and they didn't know what to say. I would carry the conversation. My dad would participate, and my mother would talk about things as if I was supposed to know. But my brothers would stand along the wall and not know what to do. That's what it felt like.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Yeah, your appearance had to trigger memories because it was such an unusual situation going on within your household. And to have such cruelty directed at one member of the family. And then you just disappeared from their lives.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

Did they talk about it? Did they ever talk about it? Did they ever ask? Or did they just believe what they were told?

SPEAKER_00 13:40

And young kids are so curious, having raised kids, it's just like they're constantly, especially two or three-year-olds, are constantly asking, why is this? Why is that? What is this? And somehow your family was able to shut that down.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

I had five younger brothers that were when I left, they would have been like twelve, ten, eight. Yeah. I did have the brother right under me make an effort. It was at my dad's funeral, actually. He spoke at my dad's funeral, and what he said really resonated with me. It felt very true. He came in late. I sat in the back. I didn't want to make a scene. It wasn't my day, but I stood in line to say something to him. He reached out and hugged me. And his wife made an effort. That meant a lot to me.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Yeah. I wasn't I didn't do anything wrong. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

But I do think they've heard a whole different story. I wonder if they hear this one day. I know my sister has talked about being ostracized and gossiped about. I'm sure that's painful. And then the teacher talking about how she would say things to people that would see my brothers. I have a memory with my sister of how she might have learned to survive within the family. She had to separate herself from me. And it was a day when my mother was playing that crazy clothing game. This time was red tennis shoes. I had ten minutes to find these red tennis shoes. And I was just frantic.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

I just asked the the clothing game was that she would hide things as if you hid them and pretend that you had hid these things when you had not. Correct. She had actually done it. Correct.

Siblings, Funeral, And Complicated Bonds

SPEAKER_02 15:40

And this particular day I'm standing in the backyard, and my mother has said, you have ten minutes to find those, or there's gonna be trouble. And my sister, who is a year older than me, 16 months older than me, comes out of the door and she's standing on the steps, and she has stuck up for me in the past. She's actually brought me food. There's ways that she's really gone out of her way to help me. But this particular day, she comes out and she starts just screaming at me.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Fine, just find the tennis shoes. Don't be a baby, just go find them.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

And I knew I wasn't gonna find them. I knew that was the the point of the whole game was this upcoming punishment. And I didn't have a way to to tell the truth. Anyway, when I look back on that memory, I just think it's an example of how my sister had to separate herself from me in order to stay in the family.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

It seems like clearly that at that moment in time, your sister, rather than being on your side, was seeing everything from your mother's perspective. There's Sadie once again losing her shoes and just causing trouble in the family. And she no longer is gonna be there for you. She's gonna just be there looking down on you as a problem.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Yeah, in my memory, I felt totally alone. I just felt deserted. Oh my god, she thinks I can find them. And I knew I couldn't.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Abandonment, really. Yeah. And so she was never gonna question whether your mom was hiding things. She was gonna always believe your mother that you had lost these things. Because 16 months apart, you're really that's hardly any time and developmental.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

And we were the only girls. Yeah. In my childhood, there were actually nine kids. There was a girl born after I left. Mm-hmm. But in my childhood, there were six boys, and my sister and I, and we were really close.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

And now to this day, your sister still maintains your mother's side of the story. She does. So in a way, she w had to brainwash herself in order to survive.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Yeah, and I have often wondered what she endured after I was gone, because my mother had to do something with that rage. My sister would be the closest one. I did hear a story from a cousin once who had come to visit, and I had been I was gone. I was out of the house. This cousin and her parents were staying at my grandma's house, and she came down to visit my sister, and they'd eaten a meal together, the family, I think. But it was my sister was cleaning up afterwards, clearing the table, putting things away. And my cousin tells me that she could tell there was a there was tension building and that uh there was something wrong with how it was being done. And she, June, my sister, asked my cousin to leave, wanted my cousin to leave. And it was so obvious to my cousin that when she went back home, she told her parents that she was worried that something bad was gonna happen to my sister. So I don't know. I wasn't there, but that was something I heard decades later.

The Clothing Game And Manufactured Guilt

SPEAKER_00 19:13

To me, it's just the way that you describe yourself as so frantic and so torn internally, like I gotta find those shoes.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

When you know you couldn't find frantically run around trying to find something. But also knowing that that was not the point. It was just the sadistic game.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

And the whole family just had to buy the storyline that it was you losing these things. Nobody saw it as a game.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

They just If anybody saw it otherwise, I was never aware of it. I don't know if conversations like that happened. I don't know if questions were asked. I'm not aware of it happening with anybody else in the family.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

For other people out there listening, it's just such a common thread in families that there's secrets and they're never talked about. And it just seems like this is a big secret in your family.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

The message, do not tell, was embedded. It was so deep that rather than asking for help, I would hate people for asking if they wanted to help. I just wanted them to leave me alone. That anger, that rage, that inability to speak was for me anyway, a way to just shut it down, stop it. Don't talk to me, don't mess things up, don't make it worse, don't you're talking about outsiders like teachers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

People trying to find out what was going on. Yep, yep. Because I think that happens in schools a lot where grown-ups are a little bit trying to find out what's going on, and it's still still happening.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

Yeah, there was a school counselor that really tried to help. He'd sit me at his desk. I remember he had this pencil jar in the middle of his desk, and I wanted to throw that jar at him, and I would just grip the chair arms, and my f I my legs would I I don't think they even touched the floor. I ha I don't know. It felt like they didn't touch the floor. And he would just give me all these tests to do, and one time he said, All you have to do is put a little pancake makeup on, and nobody will notice. And I had no idea what he was talking about because my birth defect at that time was not the top of my problems, or I wasn't aware of it, or something.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

But that's how outsiders saw it as that that the issue with this little girl was your birth defect. Yeah, and in fact it was really. But it was because your mother was torturing you, but really what was going on was the abuse at home.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

Yeah, and he knew I was uncommunicative. He knew something was wrong. He knew I came in these crazy outfits, that I didn't have lunches. Just talk to me. He'd say, just talk to me. Just tell me. In fact, he probably initiated the court. I don't know if it was the welfare or him, but he was in court. I just oh, I just dreaded those meetings. I just hated him trying. But thank God he tried. Thank God he tried.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

And so I c I think that's the message we're trying to get out here, too, is that don't give up. If you know something like this is going on with a kid.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

Yeah. And I don't know what the solution is short term, really. I knew he wasn't going to take me home with him. And that's what would have had to happen. I wouldn't tell him anything. I wouldn't talk to him. I wouldn't it was just rage. I just remember rage. Stop it. Just stop it. I hate you. I hate you.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

And the hate you was at the counselor.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Yeah. But you weren't saying that. You were not communicating.

Secrets, Outsiders, And The Counselor

SPEAKER_02 23:04

No, I just didn't communicate. I wouldn't tell. I was on that cycle for a month before I said a word about my family. And I was so glad that I was six floors up. Would daydream about my mother climbing those six floors on the outside. Imagine her coming in a window or something. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

So keep listening because we are gonna get a little more detail about how Sadie ended up in the psychwart.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

Yeah. That was a great place for me. Her happy place. That was so great. Yeah, that changed my life in so many ways.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Okay, with that, we're gonna end for today. Thank you, Sadie.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Yeah, thank you, Pam. Thanks for hanging in here with me.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

You bet.