No Time for Books

written by Finley Grace – Contributor

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A Girl Sacrifices Her Education For The Survival of Her Family

A peaceful drive down a 2-lane highway, a turn onto a single-lane country road, and a soft-right onto a tire-rutted dirt lane will take you to my mother’s childhood home. The automobile that meanders down this lane will eventually arrive at the remains of a farmhouse situated adjacent to open pastures but not before it has traveled down a receiving line of low-hanging branches, thick vines, and the network of menacing briars that make up the surrounding woodland. 

It is believed that the main purpose of this untamed access road is to bestow humility to all who frequently pass over it. Vehicles afflicted with the mud, scrapes, and gouges obtained from taking this harrowing route will, after all, never be acquisitions of pride for their drivers. The Carters were a humble, hard-working people and their farm vehicles confirmed that.

The years that my mother lived on this land stocked her mind full of stories and memories that have lasted throughout her lifetime. Her time there, however, compared to the average length of today’s childhood tenure, was short. Financial hardship prompted her family to assess their situation and pursue alternative plans for survival. My grandmother would stay on the farm to tend to the “young’uns” and livestock. My uncles would continue their education and work in the fields. My grandfather would leave the farm to find work elsewhere and my mother would do the same. She was 14 at the time.

Her job was to provide live-in care to a woman who was way up in her years and declining in her health. Besides cooking, keeping house, and providing personal care to the elderly woman, my mother had to manage a constant onslaught of family visitors coming to pay their respects to the matriarch of the home. Grandma Mills, as she was known, had a large brood and her clan of kinfolk did not hesitate to overtake the premises; unscheduled and unannounced. They could arrive morning, noon, and night and stay for hours on end, talking about politics, religion, and people who were not there to defend themselves from their judgment. 

There was always the expectation that the family would be fed while they were there, and not just any refreshment would do. Full-course meals of homemade soups, meats, side dishes, quick bread, and desserts were to be laid out on the grand dining table for their consumption, and glasses were refilled from a bottomless pitcher of sweet iced tea. The humble farm girl, hired primarily to care for the family elder, also found herself attending to the insatiable needs of the extended family and putting the demolished house back together after prolonged visits had come to an end. On most days, it seemed as if her head had just barely touched the pillow before it would rise again to perform the thankless duties of another day.

One of the most frequent guests to Grandma Mill’s home was the man who would eventually become my father. I cannot definitively say whether his perpetual presence was due to his devotion to family or his obsession with my mother. I suppose there is a possibility that both were equally motivating factors. But from my mother’s perspective, he was there to relentlessly pursue her; consistently declaring, with no observance of a courting ritual or romantic gesture, that she would be marrying him someday. My mother did not hesitate to tell him, a man 10 years her senior, that she had no intention of marrying him.

My mother’s response to my father was presented with all sincerity. She was not being coquettish. There was no flirtation in her tone. At that time, the only thought in her mind was that her situation was temporary. Her time in servitude to the Mills clan would eventually come to an end. She would return to her childhood home and live out her adolescent years as she should: under the guidance and protection of her family and with the formal tutelage of a teacher until she was equipped to make it on her own. Although she was not immune to a girl’s fanciful dreams of falling in love and creating a family and home of her own, she was clear that those dreams were not to be pursued until the time was right…. and that time would not be until she had finished high school.

My mother was not too proud for manual labor but she was eager to resume her studies and return to the one-room schoolhouse that served her farmland community. She missed training her hand to write in fluid cursive, competing with her classmates in math drills, and reading works of fiction set in far-away lands. Living on the farm had taught her to be self-sufficient. She knew how to cook, clean, and care for herself and others. She learned how to survive at an early age but she was fully aware that formal education would allow her to flourish. There is a happy ending to this story. My mother did eventually reconnect with her family. She did find a perfect partner with whom she created a happy home and she did, finally, complete her high-school education. But none of this happened within the timeline of her choosing. Despite my mother’s objections to abandoning her adolescence and education to marry my father, that is indeed what happened.

In her 15^th year, my mother took the oath of marriage with my father to help alleviate the continued financial strains on her family. Prior to doing so, she made him promise that they would move into their own home and not live with his family. This was, no doubt, my mother’s naïve attempt to establish some sense of independence, if not from my father, at least from my father’s family. This, however, was not to be. 

My mother’s actual circumstance materialized before her eyes when my father broke his promise only a few hours after repeating the wedding vows. On her wedding night, the tearful young wife found herself in her bridal bed with her uncompromising husband on top of her and his infant brother watching the rape take place from his crib.

That night was followed by years of domestic servitude to my demanding father and his overbearing family. There were multiple pregnancies as well as miscarriages that were intertwined with frequent episodes of physical and verbal abuse. My mother’s days were filled with cooking, cleaning, doing laundry by hand, ironing, sewing, gardening, hauling water, and any other errand or task required to steer clear of the family’s wrath.

This oppressive lifestyle lasted for over 20 years until one pre-dawn autumn morning, my mother took me and my sibling from our warm beds and the three of us fled to a new life. My sister was 13 years old at the time. I was 5.

I don’t remember a whole lot of communication between my mother and me in my early years.  As the fifth of five girls and only one of a whole lot of other kids my mother was forced to raise, I can imagine that the wonder of motherhood had pretty much evaporated by the time I came into existence. Her daily rituals for household management were already well established before she knew me and, other than taking a pause to deliver me into the world, she did not break her pace despite my arrival onto the scene. She merely attached me to her hip and returned to her mechanical routine of housework, me hanging onto her like she was a buoy in turbulent waters.  Her care for me was basically accomplished in the silence and detachment of the exploited.    

That all changed after my mom committed to separating my sister, and myself from the rest of the family. After the immediate turmoil of the divorce was over, the need to share the account of the first three and a half decades of her life surfaced and her story was told fervently and directly into her daughters’ ears. If there was one thing to be remembered from the details that she shared, it was this: “You have to get an education. Never depend on anyone. You have to take care of yourself.”

This mantra was repeated almost daily by my mother throughout the remainder of my childhood. To her, education meant the difference between a life of servitude and a life of independence. She had barely survived the former. She wished for her daughters to find opportunities and thrive with the latter.

I am now 53 and there is not a Mother’s Day that passes that I do not reflect on the life that my mother lived and the life that she offered me by removing all obstacles to my education. Although my life has presented its own challenges, oppression due to a lack of education is not one of them. I will celebrate the day when these obstacles are removed for all girls across the globe.