Probably the thing that kept me from turning into a serial killer was my grandmother, my aunt, and my great-grandmother.
I spent a bunch of time with these women.
My mom was mostly a shadow in the background of my life. My dad was great, though many of my memories of him are also murkey. My dad drove me to the electronics store near Long Beach a number of times and was very patient as I drooled over all the parts. We never really ever bought much, but I loved to window shop.
Strangely, I mostly remember Grandma and Dodi. I believe they were properly eclept Doris and Doreena -- two truly horrid names. Oh, and my great grandmother, Ena (Edna).
I like to say that I was raised by women, which is like being raised by wolves, only weirder.
At least, these women were pretty damned weird.
We all lived, for many years both before and after Washington, in a duplex. One half of the duplex housed my great-grandparents. The other half housed my Grandma and Dodi. The entire backyard, though I'm unsure if it was ever a "yard", was a warehouse-like building of about equal size to the duplex. The woodshop, tools, and my Grandfather (William Enis Crouch) lived in one half of this building.
The front half used to house an antique store, back when they sold antiques. When we lived there, it housed myself and my brother. My parents were headquartered in a small-ish room between the storefront (where we kids lived) and my grandfather's space.
I loved it. I can only imagine what kind of horror it represented to my parents, though.
Actually, I don't even know if my folks lived there or not. I barely remember them in that context! Most of life was school, projects in my own space, and the crazy women.
My great grandmother was a cat lady, you know the kind. Her husband, Ed, played saxophone or clarinet or some instrument in the back room. He was mostly just a shadowy presence in the background.
My time with her was spent in her living room with the dark, sticky carpet, watching roller derby on TV. I tried to avoid some places in her house, such as the kitchen... because I really did enjoy the pies that she would make for special events and some things do not bear thinking about too closely.
First Ed died and then, later, Ena. It was then that I learned, from a distance, that she had collected everything. Nothing was thrown away. Every room in the duplex was stacked, essentially, to the ceiling with papers and "stuff", all of which was marinated in cat urine.
My grandmother was endlessly supportive of me. To this day I think that I'm a genius because of her... though an objective test would probably show me to be an ADD hypo-manic enthusiast with little depth. But who am I to contradict my grandmother? To her, I was brilliant.
This was the one solid, neverchanging, predictable affirmation of good in my life. It was my rock.
She died when I was eighteen or nineteen and it was the only death in my family that I grieved. I still miss her. I sometimes feel her presence in my mind when I've done something that would make her proud. I think, yeah, Grandma would be pleased that I've done this great thing.
Grandma always had this goofy little lapdog -- a grandma dog, if there ever was one, called (wait for it...) Girl Dog. I shit you not. This dog lived like a queen.
We also had an illegal desert (or is that dessert?) tortoise in the back lane between the buildings. We sometimes grew tomatoes that were eaten by giant aggressive green tomato worms. I mean, these worms were like something out of a Stephen King movie, or some futuristic thriller where radiation has made all of the insects giant and hostile.
But I digress.
Dodi was also supportive but in a weird way. For a while there, I was her personal dress-up doll... I probably have photos of me at age eleven or twelve in this prince costume. I shudder to think of it now, but then it made me feel special.
I found my first Playboy in the trash after noting my Grandpa throwing it away. That was cool. Some time later, I discovered another one under my aunt's bed. This one I was able to browse by stealth, which was way more fun that having the leisure of the first one.
My aunt herself tended towards the translucent nightgown and, as I later learned as parts of my anatomy started to care about such things, she was also quite shapely.
How many fourteen year olds do YOU know who had the hots for his father's sister? This kind of thing couldn't have been good for me.
Dodi was pretty damn nuts. She was an amazing artist but could never finish anything, because it was never "just right". She would pull an oil painting out of storage and fiddle with it endlessly, until it was ruined. But in fact, they were beautiful. If only she could let it well enough alone.
Whenever she went anywhere, it was proceded by (I swear!) a three or four hour ritual of getting ready... makeup, hair, clothes, sometimes all of the above three or four times.
And then once we got there, usually somewhere GREAT like Disneyland, she would poop out after no time at all. A great trial for a kid with endless energy and a desire to see everything.
She had an Australian boyfriend for a while, and he brought me gifts of cold-power rockets and land racers. Those were cool.
I had a budding friendship with an actual girl that was actually my age.. I don't know how old I was, thirteen is a possibility, but it could have been eleven or fourteen. We were slowly learning how boys and girls can actually get along and then, suddenly, she plays some kind of hard to get game. I don't remember the details, it was probably something like not wanting to talk to me or something like that.
Turns out that Dodi was guiding her along in some headgames that turned out badly for us all. During the process I rejected her completely (I don't do "head games") and even upon learning that it was my Aunt's doing I never reconciled again. I actually regret that. I was a rigid, inflexible, angry kid.
Dodi also loved high drama, and is the reason I dislike it. If there was an emergency to be crafted, a trauma to engineer, she was there for it.
Last I heard, she was the divorced (or possibly re-reconciled) second wife of an Iranian political refugee living on welfare in one of his mansions, covered with Tattoos for Jesus, and warping her three kids. But I haven't heard about her for years, so she could be even weirder now.
Grandma just coasted along through all this madness, a bubble of calm (or, more likely, denial) in this swirling sea of chaos. At one point when I was about fourteen (wild guess) she had a heart attack in the living room.
This room was amazing, a showroom for the best of the antiques that they collected. Chinese foo-dog chairs, old screens, paintings, vases, I don't know what all. And in the center, a giant crystal chandelier hanging down to just four or five feet above the ground.
The paramedic had the misfortune to stand up underneath this monstrosity and bang his head on the large, heavy, HARD crystal ball hanging at its nadir. Darn near knocked him silly.
I heard that Grandma was more concerned for him that for herself!
I don't know where most of that stuff went when she died. I should have gone to California at the time to pay my respects and possibly get a piece of my memories to take home with me. That's another thing I regret, but at the time I still had a burning hatred of California (actually, I still do) and did not want to put foot to soil in that dreaded state.
Yeah, good times.
There's more... lots more. All in good time.
Posted by Edwin at January 10, 2005 02:34 PM