E19. Stevie

Here, we introduce Stevie, the foster guardian who changes everything by simply offering clear expectations and real freedom. The details feel small until you realize they are the building blocks of safety, attachment, and a life that finally belongs to her. 

On late-night drives, Sadie’s thoughts loop back to Ma's relentless rural labor as if she's carrying the world upon her shoulders. Sadie describes the complexities of what never fully leaves: sadness, shame, and complicated loyalty; how sympathy can exist without empathy; and why rage might miss its target. 

Thanks for listening. Feel free to subscribe and share with others. You can also email us at < sadiegreenstory@gmail.com or send a voice message from any particular episode on our website http://SadieStory.Buzzsprout.com

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
• Maggie Kazel
• Pat Farrell
• Lynette Tabert
• Laura Jensen
• People's Farm Collective
• Deborah Copperud of "Spock Talk" podcast

Transcript

Welcome And Setup

SPEAKER_01 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. Hey Sadie.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Hi, Pam. Good to see you today.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

I'm excited to hear this episode because I've met Stevie.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Yes, we're gonna talk about Stevie. The person I met in the last episode at the uh fast food restaurant across from my high school. And that was a big day.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Yeah, she's the foster mom that has stayed in your life and took you into adulthood and is still with you.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Yes, I just saw her today, actually. She's still as fun and kind and sharp as ever.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Alright, let's hear it.

Stevie’s Home And New Safety

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Stevie, as my legal guardian, was paid a monthly allowance of $150 from the state for my expenses. This was in 1972. She and Lou, the other teenager who lived with her already, met at a neighborhood park and rec center where she worked before she got the job at the detention center. Lou, like me, came from a large, low-income family. Except for when she was in school or sleeping, Lou had all but lived at that park center. When Stevie invited her home one evening for a meal, and then another and another, until Lou stopped going to her own home altogether, no one in her crowded, chaotic family seemed to mind. While living with Stevie, Lou and I had room to breathe beyond safety and survival needs, and beyond waiting for a bomb to fall. We recognized our liberty enough to settle into a routine that gave us company and laughs and eventually a comfort I had never known. Stevie tells me now that she figured what I needed most then were clear expectations and a lot of freedom. I'd been locked up and ruled over so long that more than anything I needed to learn how to power my own life. I had plenty of common sense. I understood survival. Now it was my spirit and my soul that needed attention. There were few rules at our house. We were expected to eat supper together every night or give a 24-hour notice. We were expected to grocery shop together and share household chores. And Lou and I had to stay in school if we wanted to remain with Stevie. Over time, we began to feel like a real family unit. Here was someone in my daily life who I could tell my private thoughts to. When Stevie joined a dating service in a last ditch effort to date men, Lou and I met hopeful boyfriends at the beginning of the evenings and then stayed up late to hear the awkward, sometimes funny descriptions at the end. When I got a clothing voucher from the county for new school clothes, Stevie was the one I wanted with me while I shopped. We spent half a day inside department stores, bolting in and out of dressing rooms, scrutinizing every item on the racks, in a delightful search for three simple but thoroughly complete outfits. When I was stranded across town, instead of walking home alone at any hour of the night, now I could call Stevie. Our first home together was in an upper duplex on Malcolm Street. The house barely had a yard, but since our duplex apartment was on the second floor, we could climb out our living room window onto a slanting, shingled roof, and watch pedestrians walk by, or hear radios and cars with their windows rolled down, passing through the winding streets below. At night, for instance, when the apartment was too hot, I could perch on the roof, unseen, with my curvy Coca-Cola glass in hand, and survey the entire block. Sometimes in late afternoons, when I was home alone, I'd pull an old stuffed armchair over to that window, facing out, and sink down inside its softness with my feet up on the windowsill. The armchair had wide flat arms, a perfect surface for situating my cigarettes, the square glass ashtray, and my dear coke glass beside me. As the slanting sunlight crept across the tapestry rug, I might play Gordon Lightfoot or Neil Diamond Records on the stereo. And the longer I sat listening to music, the likelier it was I'd soon be crying. As the sun sank low and then disappeared entirely, I'd sit in the dark, smoking cigarettes and crying for no apparent reason. It was the songs themselves, I thought, that made me sad. If Stevie walked in, we might go for a drive. Let's go get lost somewhere, she'd say. And after a quick stop at the liquor store for a six-pack, that's exactly what we'd do. With the six-pack on the seat between us, she would drive and drink her beer while both of us smoked cigarettes and talked. Many evenings we toured the city late at night when streets were quiet and empty, listening to songs on the car radio. The dashboard lights lit up the car interior enough to see the shape of our hands as we passed the cigarettes or pushed the random lock of hair behind an ear. We wondered out loud what the reason for our lives might be, if fate was out of our control, and what makes people do the hurtful things they do to others. Sometimes

Remembering Ma And The Abuse

SPEAKER_00 6:27

in the middle of this mood, I thought of Ma. I thought of how she spent her whole life working, the first up in the morning and the last to go to bed at night. I thought of her contagious laugh and what seemed a natural generosity, and how others were so drawn to her because of it. I thought of her when she was young and pretty. I remember a long ago afternoon when I watched Ma moving quickly through the house while getting ready to go into town with Pa. Was she excited or just in a hurry? She was looking for a belt to match the blue and black striped dress she wore when she went somewhere special. The dress had mid-length sleeves, was fitted through the bodice, and billowed out below the waist. The royal blue, with wide black stripes, painted a bold, dramatic pattern. Even after several babies, standing only five foot three, her imposing energy and strength made her so much larger to me then. It is her work that I remember most. I see her hauling laundry baskets full of wet clothes up the basement stairway. Every week she pounds the bread dough. At harvest time, she cans bushels of vegetables. She makes big meals from scratch. She sews clothes to save money, washes in a ringer machine, irons and mends for a family of ten. She churns the butter, separates the milk brought in from chores, and fulfills a million other duties. During lambing season, she might stay up all night by lamplight in the barn, helping ewes in troubled labor. During hay season, after Pa's tractor circles the fields, first with the mower, then the rake, and then the baling machine, she walks on one side of the moving hay wagon while Pa walks on the other, grasping hay bales more than half her size with a hooked tool and hoists them up onto the wagon. She matches his bales one for one, though Pa would never dream of doing women's work. Much of this work occurs while she is either pregnant or after she recently gave birth. I cannot imagine living the life she did, with its relentless labor, where there was no money unspoken for, and never time alone. Pa was usually absent from the house, either working outside in his fields or helping other small farm neighbors down the road. When he came in at mealtimes, the table was already set for him. He slid into his chair at the far end of the table, where Ma sat opposite him in the chair nearest the kitchen. Pa smiled in his appreciative way, while Ma kept up a constant running back and forth to the kitchen to get one more item. After the noon meal, Pa returned to work. After supper, he left the table to update the records in his notebooks, or to read his war stories. Ma cleared the table, put the food away, washed the piles of dirty dishes, and organized clutter on the counters. Then, after separating the milk from evening chores, she took apart and washed the separating machine. I wondered if she had a friend like I have now and Stevie. Was there anyone with whom she could confide her fears and insecurities? Were children always in the way? As I think about Ma's life, I find a million reasons for her hostility toward me. Overwork and poverty, a lifetime chain to doctor bills, the birth defect. I grab for these to help explain my early life. How could this happen? How did it start? Before abuse became a way of life, until I was no longer a child, but a target, a thing, until the very sight of me invited rage and disappointment. What did I ever do to deserve you? And I wonder if and when my own rage will point to her as a person instead of to the circumstances of her life. For how she vented her regret on me. Because so far, it doesn't. I certainly embody rage and did especially in my twenties, once I was finally free enough to express it. But my rage never focuses on her directly. Am I afraid? Is it impossible to hold your mother to account? Any umbilical attachment is long dead. But I carry a great sadness and the haunting questions do hang on. Why couldn't she like me? Why did it go this way? Can she see my humanity like I see hers? How does she think about it? Why do I stay passionately loyal, class-wise and gender-wise? Do we figuratively reach for our mothers even when they've dropped us? Even when we haven't spoken for 30 years and never once shared conversation? I often ask myself, do I forgive her? If the definition of forgiveness is to cease to feel resentment, as my dictionary claims, then how does one explain the sadness, the years of unwantedness, the loss of belonging anywhere, the loss of familiness? How does one cease feeling that? My mother is much more than her abuse. Rural folk like her are invisible or ridiculed even when they grow the food that feeds us. Mothers like her are solely burdened with children. Wives like her prop up their men while at the same time deferring to them. Women like her hold up the world in this culture. And yes, she took it out on me. She did, but how do I condemn her? I can't distinguish between her and the culture she was grown in. I am free now.

Why Rage Doesn’t Land

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Wow, that that really moves me, Sadie, and I'm thinking about you in that car with the wind in your hair, maybe, and the beer and the cigarettes and Stevie. And here you are having some freedom and liberation.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Yeah, I didn't drink beer. Stevie would not invite me to drink beer for sure.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Oh yeah, and that and we'll say in defense of Stevie that she sobered up shortly later. Oh, shortly there up.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

She's been sober for decades.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Yeah, so she wasn't drinking beer driving around person very long. No. But at this time, your mind was free to wander and uh it went back to your mother.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

I have really fond memories of those drives. Stevie really loved the river and being outside. She was a real nature person. And I do remember thinking about my mother at the time.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

My question is about rage and how you're exploring it in this piece. And curious as to why you don't have more rage. Your mother almost becomes a superwoman. I mean, you can just see her throwing those hay bales up and children on each hip and Yes.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Yeah, I think probably many women, rural women, were superwomen. It's amazing what she did. Uh ringer washing machine, gardening, harvesting, separating milk every single night. She was constantly working with all these kids and no money. I mean, it is a superwoman.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

And she was a role model because you're a worker. Anybody who knows you knows that you're a worker.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

And she was really strong.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

As I was, am. I'm losing my strength now in my old age, but I've prided myself much of my life on being strong. Carrying fifty pound bags of flowers.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Yeah, I've seen you in action.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Do you still wonder about the rage? I do, I do. Yes, I do. I have no empathy for my mother. Sympathy, yes. Empathy, I don't. I don't have a heart for her. I did want her to apologize or acknowledge or tell me why. And I wanted her to like me. Or I didn't understand why she didn't like me. All the way up probably through my forties. Certainly into my forties. But I don't have a feeling for her, including rage. And I've had a lot of rage, but it is not directed at her. And I've often wondered if the fear is so big that I just can't allow myself to feel that with her. I don't feel it in my belly. I don't feel it in my I don't feel the rage directed at her. I I do have a lot of sympathy for her. She did have a, you know, what I think would be a really hard life. I don't know if she was happy. She might have been happy. I think her and my father really liked each other. I think they really were a team. Yeah, I don't know how she did it.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Alright. Well, I just want to let you know how much I appreciated hearing that. And also for many people out there who are looking for their rage that might be a window into understanding it. And then there's all these people who just have no ability to keep their rage under control. Yeah. So it's a mystery of the universe.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

I was so lucky to have a place to really vent a lot of rage during the Vietnam War. Because I lived on campus, I went to high school on campus. I got involved in the anti-war movement and that gave me so much permission. Yeah, permission and positive attention for having that rage.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Living with Stevie seems to have been a big turnaround in your life, no longer trying to be part of this perfect nuclear family. And so do you have more about that time period?

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Yeah, I could really be myself with Stevie in a way that I didn't feel capable of doing with the foster family. It may not I don't know how much that has to do with them or with me. But things were very structured with them and it was so different from life before them. And with Stevie I just had room to I remember making popovers all the time. I loved making popovers and I just got a binge on making popovers. And I could talk to her. I don't remember talking to the foster parent about myself or about things that were important to me. And with Stevie I could do that. I could really talk out loud. And maybe that was for the first time.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Alright, let's give a shout out to the foster parents of the world.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

Yeah. She also was young and she was only eleven years older than me. And had a lot of the same she'd been involved in the anti-war. There were ways that we understood each other.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Okay, let's hear some more.

Work, Belonging, And A Second Life

SPEAKER_00 18:03

During my junior year in high school, we found another upper duplex. This duplex also had an attic. And since neither Lou nor Stevie seemed interested, I claimed it as my own replica from Crime and Punishment, the novel I was reading at the time. Just like the long, steep stairway, I imagined, between Raskonikov and his elderly landlady, mine was long and dim, winding up three flights of stairs from the back door. At the top of the stairs, the attic floors were simple wooden planks. Unfinished rafters slanted down steeply from the ceiling's center. This A-shaped roof framed dusty garret windows that let in dull light on each end of the room until I rubbed them clean with newspaper and windecks. I hauled up a narrow cot underneath a garret window and meticulously saved from every paycheck for the coveted stereo. This attic offered precious privacy to read, a chance to design my very own apartment, but with companionship just one floor down. Unbelievable good fortune for a girl who once lived in an abandoned car and a cardboard freezer box. Walking home from school one day, I noticed a help-wanted sign taped to the window of a Mexican cafe on 14th Street. The taco factory was positioned on a main drag between the college campus and the high school. So this particular sidewalk cafe was a favored hangout for both crowds. I stood outside the window briefly, then boldly pushed open the door and walked through to apply. While I filled out the two-page application, the cafe manager ate his lunch, lounging against a freezer chest across the counter from me. He hired me on the spot. There was nothing about my job I didn't enjoy. Even the mundane tasks of vacuuming and filling ketchup bottles before close. I felt an ambiance that lingered long after serious debaters cleaned their plates at the red checkered tablecloths, raised their glasses, and stepped into the night. I had a role here. I fit in, and life held so much possibility. I could look up at the night sky and wonder how those stars above me now were the same stars I had looked upon before. This particular waitress job was just the first in a long career of waitressing. For nine years, I worked in early morning breakfast places, hip cafes, business clubs, and late night pizza joints. One summer and fall, I worked at a hardcore drinking bar where drunks threw other drunks against brick walls and sometimes left them bleeding on the sidewalk. One night after chairs flew through the air and workers hid under the drink tables, the manager asked, How come a nice girl like you works in a place like this? Not sure what he meant by nice, because the other girls worked hard as well. I figured my size, at least fifty pounds smaller than the others, meant I must not look as tough as them. What the manager did not know was how much this felt almost familiar, and that after the bar closed every night, I walked deserted streets to a downtown bus stop, hoping I didn't miss that last ride home. Although life never felt so charmed or unrestricted, I harbored a vague fear that it was temporary. Again, I seemed to live inside a movie. Instead of a real life. Real life was the farmhouse and Ma's message that I was unworthy except for punishment. This new free life just couldn't be mine, couldn't last forever. So planning was not part of my landscape. I didn't look to the future. But I don't remember looking back either. I don't remember grieving anyone, as if there were no connections to sever in the first place. Or the severing cut too deep to comprehend. As if the wall between the worlds was impervious, I simply accepted this life, for now at least, as a different one entirely, and moved forward, day by day, to make the most of it.

Trauma Echoes In Shame And Loneliness

SPEAKER_00 22:46

But repercussions of long trauma do not live so easily. At my core, of course, I did believe something was wrong with me. At home with Stevie, I sought approval all the time. If she bleefly said, What happened to your hair today? I refused to leave the house. I obsessed over my clothes. With one slip or sleight-of-hand comment, shame could knock me to the ground. Romantic liaisons did not seem remotely possible. Physically I burned with intense energy, but a profound loneliness underlined my wildness. I felt guilty for my good life. I tied yarn around my wrist to remind myself of starving people. When a male friend ate lettuce for two weeks to avoid the draft, I tried to emulate him. If he could suffer, so could I. I made lists of rules to patrol my own behavior. At 19, I wrote in my first journal: if I compare myself to people who have less, if I can see my overindulgence as an unfair privilege, then maybe I can bear some of their pain. I bought a ring that day to symbolically remind myself of my undeserved good fortune. As I grew up and out in my own world, Ma and hers grew older. She aged so much in the seven years between my leaving at 14 and my first visit at 21 that I might not have recognized her on the street. When I stepped over that threshold as a visitor at 21 and sat at their table sipping coffee from the heavy mugs, we didn't share any of what happened in the seven years between. Years that for me included six months on a cyc ward, three years in foster homes, and three major surgeries related to my birth defect. No mention of the countless marches against the war, or of hitchhiking trips across the country. Nothing about the marijuana I smoked constantly, or the purple haze at all-night dancing parties, or of generally hurdling through life with little thought to consequence. Nothing measured up to the amount of risk I came from. That wasn't mentioned either. Instead, I hid my cigarettes and sat across from them at the same table I was not allowed to sit at before, unless company was present. It was startling to see, at that first visit, how the face of one could change so drastically in seven years. But the years passed, and as I moved through my twenties, intrigued with the subject of power and human relationships slowly getting settled in my second life, I must admit, I almost lost sight of Ma entirely.

Closing Reflections And Thanks

SPEAKER_00 25:50

And that will be the end for today.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Okay. Thank you, Sadie. Powerful stories.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Thank you, Pam, for being here with me.