I was six. It was a beautiful summer day. I was swinging and facing a mountain range. I looked up to the sky and saw puffy and white clouds. I told myself there has to be a God who created such beauty. That was the beginning of my faith journey. Even though I was young I knew I needed a Savior.
When I was an adult I was told by a friend, six year olds don’t have consciousness of sin. But I knew my sins were sassing, disobeying my parents, tattling on my sisters, being grumpy and stealing. I stole a miniature breakfast set, complete with a frying pan for bacon egg and a pancake turner. When I got home I realized I couldn’t play with it in the house. I went behind the barn and played a little while, but it wasn’t worth it. I left them there.
My parents were at odds with each other. Dad wanted a clean house, Mom didn’t care or it was not a priority. Our farm house had smoke blacked walls from the woodstove, the mess that comes from carrying in the wood. Cats and dogs in the house, a slop bucket to feed the hogs, potato carrot peelings, rotten tomatoes and fruit. To get there we carried a colander that dripped from the kitchen sink to the back stinky porch, the driveway wasn’t paved, no end of dirt. We had a Kirby vacuum cleaner. It emitted dust every time we vacuumed.
Mom taught us how to fear Dad every day before he got home from work. She’d say “Clean up the house your Dad is coming home.” We hurried around dusting furniture, sweeping floors, vacuuming rugs and stashing our school and homework papers in the top drawer in the dining room buffet. At least we knew where everything was.
I was playing my role trying to stop the family pain, a very big job since I was just a child. Dad was depressed. I tried to make him happy. Mom was unpredictable. I tried to please her. Grace had aches, why was she the one? Sophie’s teeth turned black because the dentist painted them to prevent cavities making her a target for teasing by two of her friends who sat beside her on the school bus but not the next. I hurt for her but I couldn’t help. Leslie was content. I didn’t worry. Elsie was hateful. I didn’t know why. I was anxious and I know why.
Dinner time our whole family ate together, each of us sitting in accustomed places. Dad sat at the head of the table, Mom and Elsie at the other end. I sat closest to Mom, Sophie beside me and Grace and Elsie sat across from Sophie and me. Sometimes me and my sisters got the giggles, it made our whole family laugh. But other times Dad got mad and stormed out, some of us got mad like him, some clammed up but I was the only one who cried. He left the table time after time. Later I found he made any excuse to leave because he wanted a smoke. When I was a teenager my boyfriend would do the same hiding it from me.
I think of all the negative things that were part of my world. I had a need for safety and order. I was six and so nervous I went downstairs to go to the bathroom over and over, always ready to flee. What might happen in the dark?
My second grade teacher, my all-time favorite, was Mrs. Stonebreaker. She was intuitive and sensitive, all this little Margee needed. Arlene in class was an only child. She always had a double pack of double mint gum in her desk but at our house we only got a quarter of one stick. I decided it wasn’t fair so I took liberty to take a whole stick more than one time. After Arlene complained Mrs. Stonebreaker had all of us put their heads down and the guilty one to raise their hand. I think she knew I was the one but I didn’t trust adults and refused to confess. I knew she cared but I just wouldn’t fess up.
I was in Bluebirds, kind of a group of girls almost like a club. Mrs. McKee, our leader, had the meetings at her house. It was immaculate and smelled like the fresh-baked cookies she made for us. It was like the television show Leave it to Beaver, an unrealistic picture of an always happy home. For a Mother’s day gift she’d cut fabric into rectangles to make placemats- for my family of seven-and we got to iron a violet decal on them and she showed us how to carefully pull threads to make a fringe around all sides. They were beautiful. I was proud and Mom loved her gift.
But another day I treated Mom so wrong. She’d come to school at recess to see my classroom, but I hid. I was embarrassed, her dress had grease stains. When Dad came home I heard her crying and hid in their clothes closet behind Mom’s dresses, ironic I know.
I had Mrs. Stonebreaker again in the third grade. She knew something was still bothering me and to her concern and to my embarrassment had me sit on a chair by her desk chair and quietly asked if I was okay. She was genuine and tender but I really didn’t know what was troubling me.
One day I packed my little suitcase to run away from home. Just before the corner of the main road Mom hadn’t tried to stop me. It hurt. All I wanted was her attention.
But on the positive side just before bed Mom read to me and my sisters Little House on the Prairie. We gathered around and with bated breath wondering what would happen next as the story unfolded.
What a contrast up or down, I didn’t know which it would happen next.
Dad was sometimes hard to please. One spring day the place for the garden was covered with yellow mustard weeds. I pulled all of them up and put them in a big pile. I was proud and excited for him to see. But when he came home I showed him and saw his expression, it told me plowing alone would have done the trick. He didn’t look impressed with all the effort that I wasted.
But one time when Mom and my sisters were gone I fixed dinner for Dad and me. I made mashed potatoes and hamburger gravy. The potatoes stood up like little sandcastles and gravy like snow on a mountain top. We both laughed. It really was pretty funny.
At the end of haying season I was in one of two hay mows in the barn. One of the cows was misbehaving. Dad threw a milking stool at it. In my fright I jammed the pitchfork in my foot. I ran to the house. I knew I needed to go to the doctor but the Fuller Brush salesman was there and Mom didn’t take me until she was done visiting with him. The doctor put a drain in it because the pitchfork was so unsanitary.
After school one day I was playing at the cattle guard down the road from home. I left my saddle shoes there and it rained that night, ruining them. The next morning I went to get them and showed them to mom. She told me I was going to get a spanking from Dad after he came home from work. He spanked me with a sharp stick of kindling. It really stung inside and out.
Leaving them was a childish act, not something I’d done on purpose. The message to me was money mattered more than me and shouldn’t be wasted. When I got a new pair of shoes I polished them every night. I wanted them to look nice and protect my dignity.
My sixth grade teacher was Mrs. Duddly. She played favorites and I knew I wasn’t one of them. The kids in class called Sherry a flea bag but Mrs. Duddly didn’t try to stop them. The class didn’t know my sisters and me had scabies, an itchy rash- from clothes not washed in really hot water.
A boy in class Gary told me I had skinny hairy arms. After that I wore a long sleeved sweater covering my arms whatever the weather. One day a teacher told me that I didn’t have to wear it in hot weather. Later I realized that he was a toe-head so my hairs looked dark. End of story Mrs. Duddly gone and Gary gone.
I was a finicky eater. Mom fixed oatmeal for breakfast but I refused to eat it. When it was time for lunch the same story, only then the milk and oatmeal were cold. Dinnertime came and I was told if I didn’t eat it the whole family wouldn’t go to the drive-in-theatre, a very rare occasion. It was awful, it was cruel but I had to eat it. I didn’t eat oatmeal for thirty years.
