Musing

I am a muse in my own mind. It's meant. It's not always fun or funny. I write to create feelings or a safe place to dispose of them or to record the events that created them. Sharing is a social necessity. It needs to be balanced against the greater need for effectiveness. The goal is to feel compassion and understanding while seeking them.
Maine has never been free for this woman or many others. It wasn't ever just for aboriginal families or members of so called cults. What does just mean if not fair?That is my point.
My mother was a Mormon and that is considered a cult in these holier than thou uptight societies which are predominantly northern Baptist. The biggest difference between them and their southern counterparts would be the sheets that many southerners wear. Northerners are more secretive and harder to identify. Woman and children are to Maine men what persons of color used to be for too many; personal property.
During prohibition, a local pedophile was even elected sheriff. I'm not certain whether this was typical and acceptable behavior since it was still going strong and so was he throughout the fifties and sixties, though he was no longer the county's sheriff..
My first decade of life was a time for family bonding and discovery. I was fourth daughter in a large family but pedophiles were not ever discussed. My mother taught respect for our elders, proper manners, self discipline, consideration and survival. My father taught us to survive in the woods and beside the river. We only had one set of grandparents because my mother and her younger sister were orphaned before my mother was six years of age. My father had no brothers and only one of his two sisters ever married though marriages were lifelong for both she and their parents.
It wasn't a factor taken into account by the state of Maine when it ruled both of my parents unfit for custody and made eight children wards of a corrupt and abusive society. Pedophiles were placed in positions of authority over my siblings and me. Keeping us together in The State Military and Naval Children's home became more expensive than splitting us up into corrupt foster homes. Only three remained together at the Bath Children's home after that first five years. By the new year, there would only be two. I spent 'sweet 16' and a total of twenty months in a 'reform' school for girls on 'the hill' in Hallowell, Maine 'upriver'. It was administrated by a lesbian who was allowed to adopt her favorite girl and to resign under protest of inadequate funding. I heard where she went from the grapevine since my sister was best friends with this girl. My understanding is that improprieties continued to follow this woman but it was never completely disclosed due to the backlash of protests that would ensue.
I survived to experience more injustices. It has made me a crusader for justice or even just ice. I speak for the under spoken who have been intimidated into silence or bullied into social conformity.
Truth is relative to the perspective of the viewer. My family was utterly destroyed at a crucial time in its development. It was not allowed to grow stronger and more secure. We were discouraged from following either of my parent's religions. In the United States, where my father attempted to serve in the Navy and where he was honorably discharged due to a 'constitutional state of emotional instability', my father remembered his true ancestors as Indians of the Chickabee tribe (sp?). He was a peaceful man with an addiction to alcohol which made him dark and moody. He drank to forget the horrors of war since he worked on destroyers every work day at The Bath Iron Works. These ships were built by the best Maine had to employ and even by workers 'frum away' as we say in these pahts. Dialect accounts for the misspelling.
My father was the last of his line so he needed a son to carry the family name.
My mother and her younger sister were orphaned before school age. Their mother was from Massachusetts but their father was from Bath where my aunt was sent just after she was born because her mother was too ill to care for her. The girls never bonded and were never as close as only sisters can be. My mother tried to bond with her children but she lost her motivation after the first three were all girls. She remained pregnant for the entire decade of of 1946 through 1956 when her Jewish doctor mercifully fixed her since Ed couldn't bring himself to do so. Of course, he said he would and did but he remained capable after such claims and another daughter and son were the consequences.