Love, Ellen: A Mother/Daughter Journey (3 page)

“Waste not, want not,” was Mother’s credo. Leftovers appeared in every imaginable form. And this idea that being wasteful was nothing short of criminal stayed with her the rest of her life.

In addition to all that stretching of food, Mother scrimped and saved, crimped and cut, and sewed all our clothes. Following her example, all three girls took up various forms of handiwork later on. But at the time, I hardly appreciated her efforts, especially since the clothes she made for Helen and Audrey became hand-me-downs for me.

We were like many families of our time, striving to better our lot, all of us playing our rather well-defined roles and doing our part to get ahead.

Home, family, security—this was the shelter in which I grew up, and I loved it more than anything. The worst day of my young life was having to leave that cocoon and go to kindergarten.

“But I don’t want to go!” I protested daily to Mother, crying every time the topic was raised. “I want to stay home with you!”

When the day arrived, Mother saw no other recourse than to put me out on the front porch, go back inside, lock the door, and pray. Her prayers, apparently, were answered. After my terrible suffering, I adjusted well to grammar school. Then, at age twelve, when I had a chance to go to summer camp, I went through the whole process all over again.

By this point, after many long years of striving, we had finally been able to buy a house of our own at 9121 Nelson Street. Finding the right house for what we could afford hadn’t been easy.

Since Helen and Audrey were in their late teens and busy with their own activities, that left me to accompany Daddy and Mother to go look at the various houses, some of them large, some in nicer neighborhoods.

Daddy had been certified as a real estate appraiser, so whenever we went to see a house for sale he knew just what to look for. He would crawl under the house with an ice pick looking for termites while Mother and I stood outside and prayed that he wouldn’t find any.

Number 9121 Nelson Street was not one of the bigger houses, and not in one of the better neighborhoods, but it had no termites and it turned out to be our house. It had a relatively big backyard with a productive fig tree and Daddy soon built a fish pond and a brick patio. Inside it had two bedrooms and one bath, for a family of five, and no air-conditioning—in New Orleans, yet! Even so, we were definitely moving up in the world. We were achieving the American dream: home ownership.

Again, the lessons I learned were not unusual. Through my family’s example, I was taught that as long as we worked hard and had a positive attitude, all Americans could have the same chance at that dream.

Maybe that’s why, today, I have such a hard time understanding those who don’t support laws to protect the rights of gay citizens on the job and their right to live safely where they choose, without the fear of being fired or evicted simply because they’re gay.

When people call these “special” rights, I have only to think of the segregated neighborhood half a block away from us on Nelson Street and the laws that became necessary to provide these very rights for our black citizens.

In fact, one reason we were able to afford our house was its proximity to this section where the black families lived. There were no visible boundaries, but it was as though we lived in separate cities. Their ramshackle houses made our little house and those around it seem palatial by contrast. Our black neighbors sat on their front porches and steps. Now and then, they passed by our houses. And yet it was as if they were invisible. We just didn’t see them. I don’t even know where their children went to school. That’s how segregated we were.

Strangely, and sadly, I had forgotten this example of injustice until only recently. But now I remember that time when others were made invisible because of the color of their skin. It wasn’t right then, and it isn’t right now.

A
S YOU MIGHT EXPECT
, my sisters and I were raised with very traditional ideas about marriage and family. The message was that nice, pretty girls like us grew up and married nice young men who would provide and look out for them and their children. Just like Mother and Daddy.

Mildred Morrill—”Miss Millie” as Daddy called her—was only seventeen when she became Mrs. Dick Pfeffer, and he was only twenty-one. Imagine—a wife and mother while still a child herself, suddenly thrown into child-rearing and other wifely duties.

We never tired of hearing the story about our parents’ romance. “Was it love at first sight?” I, the romantic, would ask Daddy.

“Bets!” Mother would quiet me before he could answer. That question was much too personal.

Audrey, always sunny, giggled. Helen gave me a knowing, thoughtful look as if to say of course it was love at first sight. How could it not be? Mother was very pretty with her pale Irish coloring and slim figure, even though she never seemed to realize how cute she really was.

Daddy was notoriously impatient—something I inherited in a big way—and he jumped in, “For crying out loud, do you want to hear the story or not? I was making …”

“Your father was making ninety dollars a month,” Mother interrupted, “and he got a ten-dollar raise, thought he was rich, and proposed.” She smiled, deferring to Daddy, the boss, as always, “Right, hon?”

“That’s right, Miss Millie,” he said.

Though Daddy always had the last word, he knew better than to argue or hurt Mother’s sensitive feelings. That was how, in her own quiet, deferential way, she wielded a good deal of control in our family.

“After that,” I concluded, “you lived happily ever after.”

Their story to me was just like all the fairy tales that shaped my early consciousness. Like Cinderella and Prince Charming. Then, later on, I learned about love from the movies—all the different versions of Girl Meets Boy. I loved going to the movies. I grew up at our neighborhood theater, Ashton’s. Once a week Mother and Daddy and I would walk the eight blocks there, sometimes stopping beforehand for a seafood dinner of delicious fried oysters and fried shrimp.

The stars I loved most were strong, sensitive young women like Jeanne Crain, Jane Powell, and Elizabeth Taylor; later on I liked Ida Lupino’s acting and Anne Baxter in
The Razor’s Edge.
Watching these heroines, I remember being completely carried away. On the way home with Mother and Daddy, I’d always walk half a block ahead of them, in my own world—pretending that I was that beautiful young girl on the screen with the storybook life.

I remember one of Ida Lupino’s speeches in a heartbreaking farewell scene that stayed with me long into adulthood: “All of us are standing in the mud, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

In our sheltered household and with all the love stories that filled my head from the books I read and those I saw in the movies or heard on radio, never once did I encounter the kind of love stories that have, in reality, been happening since the beginning of written history—Girl Meets Girl and Boy Meets Boy.

No wonder Ellen thought I would have trouble understanding her sexual orientation. In many ways, I really was brought up in the dark. Or, as my sister Helen’s kids like to say, in the Dark Ages.

S
O, HOW DID
I get past all those damaging myths? Very slowly, unfortunately. But the point is that I did get past them. And the fact is that as human beings we all have the potential to grow and heal and evolve.

I recently heard an inspiring example from a young man in the South whom I’ll call “Joe.” Joe came out to a straight friend who was also a coworker. “I thought he knew,” Joe told me. “He seemed to be dropping hints, you know.” But the friend looked down and after a moment said, “My coach was right—you should all be put in a stadium and an atom bomb dropped on you.” The friend said he no longer wanted Joe to see his wife or children, and warned Joe not to tell the wife—who was pregnant—why, or “She might have a miscarriage.” The inspiring part of the story is that over time the friend went from complete rejection to complete acceptance. The friendship has grown even closer and, yes, Joe is also close to his friend’s wife and children—proving absolutely that love is always more powerful than hate, ignorance, and fear.

N
OT LONG AGO
, a caller to a radio show on which I was speaking asked if my Christian Science background had made me more readily accepting of diversity. My answer was that it did, to some extent. Christian Science teaches that God created man in his image and likeness. That makes each and every one of us God’s perfect child—and that’s the way we strive to see our fellow humans.

Our family journey into Christian Science was interesting. For most of my life, I always thought that it was Daddy, who was raised Protestant, who insisted on Christian Science and that Mother, raised Irish Catholic, just went along with him. As it turned out, although Daddy was attracted to Christian Science as a way to help his severe hay fever, Mother had another reason for breaking with the Catholic church—an argument with the priest over birth control. Mother wanted to use it. She had seen what having eight kids had done to her mother and had decided three were enough for her. Having me was the last straw!

Birth control? That was forbidden, the priest informed her. So she left the Catholic church. Mousy or not, Mother could sometimes put her foot down and leave it there.

Christian Science, as you may know, was founded by Mary-Baker Eddy in the mid 1800s in New England as a system of healing based on prayer; she insisted that prayer was scientific. She thought the churches would embrace the idea. When they didn’t, she started the Churches of Christ, Scientist. There are no ministers. Instead, there are practitioners who pray specifically for others when asked and charge a fee for doing so. In church on Sundays, a First and Second Reader conduct the services. There are also Wednesday night prayer meetings when those attending can stand and give their testimonies of healing.

Christian Science eschews all “materia medica” and stimulants such as alcohol and cigarettes. But Christian Scientists, as a rule, go to dentists and also have babies in hospitals, using obstetricians. I believe Mary Baker Eddy approved of having a broken bone set by a physician. People over the age of twenty who are attending church on a regular basis, and who wish to become members, go before a committee and are questioned about their knowledge and sincerity.

Through childhood and into my high school years we attended regularly but didn’t join. We would call a practitioner for help, but we still used medicine and took vitamins—something devout, dedicated Christian Scientists don’t do. At a later juncture, Mother joined the church, as did I in my college years. But Daddy—who smoked regularly and drank on occasion—never became a member.

In general, I received much good from my religious education. Because it stresses the good in all of us, Christian Science instilled a lasting, positive outlook in me. I am to this day an incurable optimist. And certainly, had I not grown up with faith in God and faith in prayer, I don’t know how I would have survived the difficulties that were to come.

But I also learned a negative message from Christian Science: feelings don’t count. Instead of acknowledging our feelings, whatever the problem was, we were taught to work it out, to solve it scientifically through prayer. In other words, when it came to negative emotions, the solution was: deny, deny, deny.

The following joke illustrates how this works:

Even without the input from Christian Science, Mother and Daddy were private people. Also, we grew up with far too many unnecessary secrets. This had to do with Mother’s younger sister, our aunt Ethel. In an unusual turn of events, Aunt Ethel married Daddy’s younger brother, Uncle Charlie. That made their daughter, Maisie, our double first cousin. The same age as Audrey, she grew up as a virtual fourth sister to us.

Besides the fact that they married men who were brothers, Mother and Aunt Ethel’s relationship was unusual in other respects, which dated back to their childhood. Ethel was the younger of the two—by one year—but Mother was smaller and less outgoing. Whenever the two went anywhere together, Grandmother dressed them as twins and put Ethel in charge, letting her carry the money and speak for both. I believe Mother must have resented this on some level, but rather than complain she dealt with her feelings indirectly.

Over time, this situation made Ethel perhaps bossier and Mother even more passive and sensitive. So Mother would do anything to avoid getting a lecture from her younger sister.

“Don’t tell Aunt Ethel” was a constant refrain we heard from Mother, no matter what it referred to. Sometimes it involved Mother’s hurt feelings about something that had been said or not said. This trait was so prevalent, I later picked it up and may have passed it on to Ellen.

Fortunately, we’re both aware of it, recognize it, and work hard to overcome it. Ellen is much better at confronting—in a direct, fair manner—others who have been thoughtless. That has always been hard for me, but I’m getting there. On a positive note, being extrasensitive does make one especially compassionate to other people’s feelings, something I think both Ellen and I very much are.

Daddy’s temper and Mother’s hurt feelings weren’t the best mix. Sometimes, he could be cold and rather distant. And his opinions—so staunchly conservative that at one point he belonged to the John Birch Society—were firmly set.

The message? Opinions, like feelings, were best kept to oneself.

There was another way Mother had of brushing off any kind of disappointment, using a borrowed saying from her childhood: “Things can’t be nice.”