Toxic Mother II: She Bears a Sixth Child, Peter, - - And Puts Him Through Living Hell.

I and my four younger siblings thought growing up in separate, ever-changing foster homes was hell -- and it was. But compared to what Peter Romanos went through, it was a walk in the park.

Peter, 64, is my brother, technically my half brother. We have the same toxic mother and different fathers. The five of us escaped our mother's full wrath through abandonment. Peter was not so lucky. He took a direct hit from a toxic mother of breathtaking cruelty.

This is Peter's story.

Warning: Some of the scenes described and the language quoted are graphic. Sorry. I believe in polite and tasteful language as much as anyone, but sometimes they can get in the way of the unvarnished truth -- which is the goal here. Peter's story is therefore not prettied up.

“The hurt is deep,” he said when I called him recently to ask him about his experience with our mother. And before long, he was pouring out, between tears, a long pent-up story of a toxic mother's horrendous abuse. He says he still has horrible flashbacks and cries in his sleep.

He spent days writing down long-suppressed memories and soon envelopes containing his hand-written pages began arriving in my mailbox. In between outpourings, he would write, “George, I can't do this. It hurts too much. What good is this going to do?”

Yet he kept going.

Along with his long handwritten pages, Peter sent a large number of old photographs. One of them was the photo of Peter and our mother, shown above. However, with the one he sent me, he had carefully cut himself out of it, leaving an empty outline.

He despised our mother so much he could not bear to see himself in a photograph with her, even if he had only seen one or two such photos. “I hate the memory of our mother,” he said. And as we talked and as I read page after page of his hand-written notes, I understood why.

After our father died in 1944 and she handed me and my four younger siblings over to foster care, our mother wasted little time in moving on. In that same year, she met Peter's father and they were soon married. Peter was born in Somerville, Mass on August 17, 1946.

I never knew that Peter even existed until he was a teenager and my sister Ruby and brothers Reggie and Victor visited him at his school. They are shown in the photo with Peter. Nor did he know that we existed. Our mother never told her new husband – Peter's father – that she had five children. She didn't say a word to Peter, either.

Our mother and Peter's father divorced after about six years. Soon after, on a hot summer day when Peter was seven, he was shipped out to a family in Lynn, Mass. The family was out of control, consumed by alcoholism and sexual deviance. Peter recalls that he was constantly told to run to a bar to ask the man to come home.

When the man came home drunk, he would beat his wife and then he would beat Peter. Afterwards, he “had bruises all over” and cried for his dad. He loved his dad. “My dad was my whole life,” Peter said. “My father was a proud man, a man of great respect. Everyone loved him.”

If so, why didn't Peter live with him? First, Peter said, our mother had legal custody. It pains Peter to admit the second reason. Although he says his father was kind, funny, generous and would take him out to eat, he was a gambler. A lifelong gambling addiction “brought him to his knees.”

Peter's father never had a regular job or settled life or home, Peter said. Most of the time he lived with his sister in Cambridge. If he did get lucky and get some money, it was quickly gone. But Peter knew that his father loved him and always did his best to see him and look out for him. The photo shows Peter and his beloved dad.

When Peter's father found out about what was going on in Peter's Lynn home, he managed to have him removed. He was placed in three successive homes, all Greek-speaking, his father being Greek. All three homes were abusive. Finally, he was placed in his Uncle Charlie's home in Belmont, Mass.

It was here that Peter spent much of his childhood. Had Peter finally found a home with family and with love and where he felt safe? In a word, no. Peter unhesitatingly describes his Uncle Charlie this way: “He was a prick. He smoked stogies and ran around in his shorts ranting and raving.”

He was also a real estate millionaire and the Belmont house was big and luxurious. He made his money, Peter said, “by screwing everyone.” When relatives came over from Greece, “he would sell them a car that he got at auction for fifty bucks and give them a great deal for a thousand.” He washed cars at his uncle's used-car lot and “never got a nickel.”

All Uncle Charlie's money did not make for a happy household; just the opposite. Peter says that his uncle was always yelling and screaming at his Aunt Marie. It got so bad one Thanksgiving that she “took the turkey out of the oven and threw it down the cellar stairs.” He ran out the door.

On top of all this was a special anguish: at the age of 10, Peter could hardly speak English. All of the families he had lived with had been Greek-speaking. It was especially hard at school where the other kids laughed when he was thirsty and could only ask for water in Greek (“nero, nero”). As for grades in school, he says that he “never passed anything except for art. I didn't have to speak for that and got straight A's.”

Uncle Charlie had three daughters and a son. “The son got everything,” Peter said, “clothes, bikes, gifts, etc. I was the bottom of the barrel. His son pissed on me and told me to leave. I cried.”

Living with Uncle Charlie had a couple of saving graces, however. Peter was finally in a neighborhood where for the first time he was able to make a few friends. Also, the neighbors were great, making sure he had food and shoes. More importantly, for the first time in his life he was not beaten. “They never put a hand on me or hurt me as I was used to in the past,” he said.

Meanwhile, our mother entered into a long-term, live-in, sexual relationship with another woman, Lois Simon. One day when he was 11, Peter remembers, our mother showed up at Uncle Charlie's with a woman who looked like a man. She was wearing his father's clothes and bragging about it; she said that even his shoes fit. “I was scared and ran out the door,” Peter said.

Another time when our mother and Simon visited (with Simon wearing men's clothes), Peter's father also showed up. He and the two women got into a heated argument in front of Peter. “My mother took out a knife and waved it in my father's face,” Peter said.

He ran outside and kept running, crying the whole time. He slept in the woods that night. After that, he ran every time our mother and Simon showed up. Besides being confused at seeing a woman dressed like a man, Peter was afraid of them both. He couldn't forget that knife.

Simon had plenty of money from a family trust fund. The two lived well, traveling, buying nice clothes, and eating in good restaurants. “All I saw were the pictures they took traveling around the world,” Peter said. “They got a brand new car every year.”

With these two, the high life and taking care of a kid simply did not go together. They preferred to have Peter around as little as possible. When he was not at Uncle Charlie's or shipped out to boarding schools, he was dropped off -- as a last resort -- at our mother's condo in a building in Brookline.

At one such drop-off, Peter remembers our mother and Uncle Charlie having a nasty fight over money. She was behind on her payments to Uncle Charlie and he tried to return Peter to his Mother and Simon. “We were at the door and my uncle was pushing me into her place and she was pushing me out and they were both screaming at each other,” Peter said.

Uncle Charlie yelled, “Take your kid!” She yelled back, “I can't. I have another woman here!.” She threatened to call the police. Uncle Charlie refused to budge. Finally, she agreed to pay Uncle Charlie what was owed him and he took Peter back to his home In Belmont.
When Peter had to stay with our mother and Simon,shown with him in this photo, he says it was like this:

“Nothing was good. They took turns beating me with a leather strap. I was locked in a room for days. I was the cleaning boy. I would have to get on my hands and knees and clean their fancy rug with my bare hands with Simon standing over me.

“They made me sleep between them and they were both naked. Simon's tits were all over me. They would take turns fondling me. In the morning, I would have to get up and make their breakfast and afterwards clean up and do the dishes.

“One time while I was doing the dishes, they were both in the kitchen naked and playing around. My mother squeezed her tits and said, 'Look, I still got milk!' and Simon laughed.”

He said that when he was in the tub, Simon would “come and play with my private parts and I would get an erection, and Simon laughed at me and asked me if it feels good.” She told him to call her whenever he got in the tub and she would “help you feel good and help you wash up.”

If he got into the tub and didn't call, Simon got angry with him and still did “the same old crap” to him. She “dried my private parts and kissed my pecker,” he said. “I hated her. I told my mother and she laughed. That only made Simon mad again.”

One time Peter and Simon were alone and he had just finished cleaning the rug on his hands and knees with the palm of his hand “as a vacuum cleaner.” Simon had also been on her knees telling him what to do and why he should not be so lazy; her breasts had plopped out. He got up and went to the TV to watch some sports when something hit him in the back of the head – and he blacked out.

When a doctor came, one that our mother knew, Peter was screaming in pain. The doctor urged them to send Peter to the hospital for x-rays, but they didn't want to. They asked the doctor to give Peter a sedative. Later, it was discovered that he had a fractured skull.

“I have the scar,” he said.

Peter begged our mother to leave Simon. “But Simon was her whole world,” Peter said. “She said that she couldn't live without her and her trust fund.” She could, however, live without him.

She and Simon finally shipped their cleaning boy and sex toy off to Boy's Haven, a school for homeless children in West Newbury, Mass. It was run like a prison. Within two weeks, he ran away and hid in the woods. Two day's later, school guards caught him hitch-hiking on Rte 95.

He was brutally punished. Guards pulled his pants down and beat him with a strap – until they broke his will to resist. After that, Peter never tried to run again and did what he was told for the more than three years that he was there. He worked in the fields loading hay and hauling milk from the school barn.

While at Boy's Haven, he was alone every Christmas but one. That one time he was sent to spend Christmas with a family wanting to help the homeless. He did not know them and never saw them again. Peter's father managed to come to Boy's Haven once. He took Peter out to eat, took him in a small plane ride over Newburyport, and gave him some money.

“I had a great time,” Peter said.

But then Peter was told that his father was no longer allowed to visit. He thinks that this was the doing of our mother and Simon. “They did everything they could to keep me from seeing my father. They hurt him every time they had a chance. They hated him. I think they hated all men.”

After grammar school at Cardinal Cushing Academy, Peter attended Boston Trade School. There he made the ice hockey team. “I loved ice hockey,” he said, “and I was good at it. But our mother got me kicked off the team. She complained to the coach so much, he couldn't take it any more. He told me I couldn't play any more because the team had to come first. Our mother destroyed everything I liked.”

Peter left Boston Trade after two years. He never got his high school diploma. In later years, he changed the dates on his Cardinal Cushing elementary certificate and doctored it up it make it appear to be a high school diploma. “I did it because I needed to be able to work,” he said. (He later spent two years in business school.)

Then there was the electrical fire at our mother's and Simon's place -- which they blamed on Peter. Firemen came, put the fire out, and fired questions at Peter. He told them that he had nothing to do with the fire. Appearing to believe him, a fireman gave Peter a piece of paper to sign, saying it would help him get to a better place.

“What I was signing, “ Peter said, “was a confession and I didn't know it.” He was sent to a prison in Shirley, Mass. Along with murderers and rapists, he spent a year locked in a cell. He says it was hell on earth, but “better than what I had.”

After doing a year in prison, he was 18 and on his own. He had no education, no skills, and no good options. To Peter, the least bad option seemed to be knocking on the door of “the prick” in Belmont, old Uncle Charlie.

That's what he did. Uncle Charlie was happy to put Peter to work in his car dealership for starvation wages. He washed and detailed cars for weeks, but Uncle Charlie being Uncle Charlie, Peter saw no money. “I finally realized that this is how he gets rich, “ Peter said. “He pays no one and screws everyone.”

Alone and desperate, with rent to Uncle Charlie coming due, Peter got a job at Ken's Restaurant in Boston as a floor-mopper and cook's helper. In other words, he did whatever dirty job needed to be done. But he quickly learned to cook. He would work as a cook at Ken's Restaurant for the next eight years, while driving a cab part time.

Almost as soon as he arrived back in Belmont, Peter met Loretta, “a wonderful lady.” They had a lot in common. She grew up in foster care, her mom having died when she was 4 years old. Like Peter, she had grown up unloved and passed around from home to home. Like Peter, she was 18 and now out in the world on her own with nowhere to go.

When Peter showed an interest in her, she was thrilled. Someone wanted to love her! Peter says that the two of them were so in love that “we walked in the rain not knowing it was raining.” He says that meeting Loretta was a “great moment” in his life.

Though they were both still kids, just 18, in short order they got married, got an apartment , and began building a life together. Soon they had their first child, Eleanor (11/29/65). Their son Peter followed (5/6/66), then Charline (1/6/67), then Athena (7/22/68.

Peter now had a wife and four kids, an apartment in Cambridge, a job as a cook in Boston – and he was only 23. After several years as a cook, and with lots of mouths to feed, he wanted more. He got a job at the Belmont Water Department and worked part time as a special officer.

He declared his candidacy as Water Commissioner and his announcement was published in the Belmont Herald with his photo. He wore a suit and tie. No one would have guessed that this respectable, upstanding citizen was abused his entire childhood and had served a year in prison. Peter says his father carried the newspaper clipping in his wallet “to the day he died.”

Though he was not elected Water Commissioner, he still felt the pull of politics. He ran for and was elected president of the local American Federation of Labor. He represented the union at the Massachusetts State Convention. “All of a sudden,” he said, “I had senators calling me to sway votes.”

He said he was often offered money to influence votes one way or another. “But I didn't bite,” he said. “I kept my dignity and respect.”

But now his once wonderful wife, Loretta, seemed not so wonderful. “She couldn't deal with senators and councilmen coming to the house,” he said. He began to feel that she was no longer there for him. “So we drifted and drifted and drifted,” Peter said.

He formed a dating service and it did well. Thousands of dollars in checks flowed in, he said. When he asked Loretta to help him handle the checks, he said that she refused. “Instead, she cashed the checks,” he said. Their great love was over. Now when they walked in the rain, they felt it.

Peter says that Loretta was a “beautiful and caring person” and “wouldn't hurt a flea.” If he is sometimes critical of her --and he is – he concedes that the criticisms are mainly excuses to justify leaving her and four children.

“She was a kind and docile woman,” he said. “To this day, it hurts me in my heart for leaving her and the children. I now realize that everything I had accomplished had gone down the tubes. I got married too young, had four children, and left them all. I felt stupid.”

About the time that he and Loretta broke up, our mother called. Both despondent over the break-up of his marriage and bristling with pent-up anger at her and Simon, he went to Brookline bent on confrontation. He told our mother that she didn't deserve to see her grandchildren and that ”Simon should go to jail.”

To his surprise, our mother said she was sorry for her behavior. Peter melted. As he left, he said he needed time to think about it. But as Mother's Day approached, he had done enough thinking.

He sent our mother a card on which he had “crossed out all the good stuff” and wrote the following: “You will never see me or your grandchildren and you will never be able to hurt them as you hurt me.”

After putting this farewell Mother's Day card in the mail, Peter learned that he had lost his father. The loss of his father, Peter said, “sent me over the edge of no return.” He didn't want to live any more. Deciding to end it all, he gulped down a whole bottle of sleeping pills.

Passersby found him unconscious in the street near a phone booth and called the police. An ambulance was called and Peter's limp body was rushed to a hospital in Brookline. There doctors revived him and saved his life.

In a supreme irony, it was the same hospital where our mother was a nurse. She told doctors treating him there there that she wanted nothing to do with him.

Resuming his troubled existence, Peter went on a “women troubles” spree in which his “pecker ruled.” He entered into a five-year relationship with an older woman that he called Lovey. He summed up Lovey this way:

“We were on a love of crazy happenings that ran in circles for five years that eventually went nowhere. I finally left her. It had been a whirlwind of excitement with nothing accomplished but beautiful sex.”

Peter went on to marry and divorce three more times. Three of the marriages were short, each about a year, but one marriage -- to Eleanor – lasted 13 years. During the marriage to Eleanor, who had two children of her own, he hit a lottery jackpot for $60,000 and paid “$52,000 cash for a house in Maine.

One of the short marriages produced his fifth and youngest child, Christopher. He remembers trying to bring him a cake for his first birthday and being turned away by a restraining order taken out by his former wife.

“And after that?” I asked.

“After that, I went on my way again. I tried to see Christopher, but the years went by.”

I asked Peter a big question: “We know the kind of parent our mother was. What kind of parent have you been?”

“Fair,” he said. “Just fair.”

But he said that he has had all his kids, plus the grandkids, up to his place in Maine. “We go fishing, eat, hangout, and have a great time.” In the photo, Peter is shown with his daughter Athena and grandson Alex.

A skilled carpenter with an artistic flair, he creates many of the crafts that he sells. He designs and builds custom fences, wooden shelving, custom wood designs, and repairs lamps. Much of his work is custom-created to order and often includes original art work.

One time when he was selling jewelry, antiques, and collectibles at a flea market in Maine, he says that my sister Ruby come upon him purely by accident. He says he was so happy to see her. They talked and made plans to get together. Little came of them. Of that chance meeting, Peter said, “Small world, isn't it?” Here is one of his collectibles ads.

One constant in Peter's life has been entrepreneurship. In addition to his two stores, a taxi business, creating and selling arts and crafts, and raising turkeys, he ran his own collection agency for six years. “I was good at it,” he said, referring to the collection agency.

He specialized in accounts described by clients as “bad accounts” or “uncollectibles.” He has a dozen or more reference letters from clients extolling his bill-collecting prowess. One of them, from Airport Plaza in Sanford, Maine, wrote: “I used Peter Romanos for collection on a bad check that I had already tried to collect on and gave up. The next day, the party arrived at my store handing me the money due, including charges and apologies.”

He didn't have an office. He didn't need one. “If the client was a college,“ he said, “they would give me an office right at the college. I made the calls from right there, using their phones and facilities. It was a great business with zero overhead. Clients went around talking about all the money I brought in and that's how the business grew.” After his 13-year marriage ended, he sold the collection business and said he had no trouble doing so.

He went back to womanizing and building up his taxi business in Boston and antiques and collectibles business. Then he met Joelene. After marrying and divorcing four times, after numerous flings and break-ups, after years of upheaval, Peter seems to have come home. “I should have met Joelene years ago,” he said.

Joelene weighed over 300 pounds when he met her. She could not walk and was in a wheel-chair. She was told she would never walk again. Peter says he looked right past all the fat and saw something beautiful in her.

When she asked if he would help her, he said yes. And he did. He cooked healthy food for her, walked with her, encouraged her. The weight began to come off. As weeks became months, she continued to lose weight. She lost 157 pounds -- and has kept it off.

Today he and Joelene, who now weighs a steady 138, have a settled and happy life together at their home in Maine. They walk every day around the lake near their home. He does the food shopping and cooking; she does the cleaning and washing.

Weekends he drives his leased taxi in Boston. He drives 12 hours on and 12 hours off, about 600 miles a weekend. I called him on a Monday and he answered in a sleepy voice.

“You sound tired,” I said.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “I just drove 600 miles. I'm on my way back home to get some sleep.”

Weekdays Peter runs his antiques and collectibles business and spends lots of time with the love of his life, Joelene. Though not married, Peter and Joelene have been together for eight years. She is retired after 25 years working in day care.

“We don't need to be married,” Joelene said. “We're happy. I love Peter to pieces.”

It is easy to see that Peter feels the same way about her. Between them, they have eight grown children and 11 grandchildren. At Christmas every year, Peter dresses up as Santa for the grandkids and for underprivileged kids and loves doing it.

When he thinks of our mother and Simon, it is “pain, hurt, and run for your life.” He still has nightmares about them. But he said that “Joelene is very supporting and understanding and wakes me up when I cry in my sleep.”

So long and keep moving.

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Amazon E-Books by George Pollock

"State Kid: Hero of Literacy" is fiction based on his  real-life experiences  growing up in foster homes; "Last Laughs," is the true story of how five foster kids (he and four younger siblings) found their way in life and each other. "Killers: Surprises in a Maximum Security Prison," is the story of his being locked up for 23 hours with killers in a maximum security prison;  "I, Cadaver" is about his postmortem adventures and mischief in the anatomy lab at UMass Medical School. “A Beautiful Story” demonstrates the art and process of creative writing as a 16-year-old boy goes all out to write a story that literally saves his life;  "A Long, Happy, Healthy Life," which is about how to live the title every day; and "Unlove Story," Writing anonymously as "Elvis," a husband, dumped after 38 years of marriage, lets it all out on love, marriage, life, everything. A guy doing this? Unheard of.

  For the Nook:

A Beautiful Story
A Long, Happy, Healthy Life
I, Cadaver
Killers
State Kid
Unlove Story

The Toxic Mother: "Shut Up. You Little Bitch!"

This is a story I would prefer not to write. Unfortunately, it is reality. So here goes...

Along with my joyous discovery of a long-lost family (see earlier posts), has emerged a dark side: of dysfunction, alcoholism, grinding poverty, child abandonment, and – worst of all – savage beatings of children. One aunt abused her seven children so terribly they were all taken away from her by the Mass. Dept of Social Services (DSS). Raised in foster care, they carried on the family tradition as dysfunctional adults.

Whether I like it or not, this is my family heritage. My own mother, I'm sorry to say, was a toxic parent. Or, more accurately, she was a toxic non-parent, an absence that, in retrospect, may have been her greatest gift to me. The photo is of my mother and me as a boy, one of the few times I saw her while I was growing up.

My mother had five kids and, after our father died young (27), she handed us over to DSS. At 6, I was the oldest. My brother Reggie, the youngest, was a baby, just three months. In between in age were my sisters Marion and Ruby and my brother Vic.

After unloading five living burdens, our mother never looked back. My brother Vic said, "She just tossed us in the trash and went on with her life." She remarried. She went to nursing school, paid for by her new husband, and became a registered nurse. She was no dummy. She went on to live a long, good life of travel, shopping, and good restaurants.

I've come to think that toxic mothers are more common than we think. Just the other day, a friend who teaches tennis to many youngsters in Worcester, happened upon the handiwork of one toxic mother. Noticing that a boy did not seem to be himself, he asked him what was wrong. The boy replied, “How would you feel if your mother had just punched you in the face?”

And that's all the boy said. My friend, and now you reading this, is left to imagine the hell that this boy is going through at home. His mother, the one person on this earth who can be expected to love and protect him, punches him in the face. He can't speak of it because it is unspeakable. That's fine with most of us. We would just as soon look the other way.


The result is that extreme parental abuse has been largely hidden, unspoken of, and denied. Ironically, the current hit movie, “Precious,” about a mother's breathtaking cruelty to her daughter, is up for an academy award. Which is not to say that, although “Precious” is based on a true story, that we are ready to believe that it is anything more than an aberration.

Well, tell that to my newly-met cousin who grew up as a real-life “Precious,” suffering horrific abuse at the hands of her mother. She has the soulful eyes and life weariness of one who has seen too much and hurt too much. Yet these are not victim's eyes, passive and incomprehending; they bespeak a fierce, knowing intelligence.

Lately, she has been finding the strength to talk about it and also write about it. Sometimes she stays up all night pouring her heart out onto paper. When I hear her talk about what she went through, when I read what she has written, I cry. I cry.

Here, in her own words, is what I mean:

“The beatings I got from my mother were brutal. She would lose control and not stop until she couldn't lift her arms anymore. I'd get slapped, punched, kicked and beaten with the belt. She'd literally tear my hair out. She'd beat me so brutally with the belt that I'd have welts all over my body. More times than not, I'd end up peeing myself. She didn't care if the belt caught me in the face. The whole time telling me how much she hated me and wished I'd never been born. She told me once that when she found out she was pregnant with me, she took hot baths and actually threw herself down a flight of stairs trying to get rid of me and that I was a 'stubborn bitch and held on.' Makes you feel wanted, huh?

“I learned at a very young age to read her moods and adjust accordingly. I never knew when a slap or a punch would come my way. I avoided her as much as possible. Just having to walk into the same room with her raised my anxiety level. I never knew how to act. If I looked at her, she'd slap me and say I was giving her dirty looks, when I wasn't! If I didn't look at her, I'd get a slap for 'thinking I'm better than everyone else.' I couldn't win - no matter what I did - I was getting it.

“This particular day, I have no idea what I did to set her off. It was late afternoon and I remember getting a beating and her closing my bedroom door when she left. I cried myself to sleep. When I woke up, it was morning. I went to open my door and it would only open a crack. She had taken a rope and tied it from my doorknob to the doorknob of the empty bedroom next to mine. I couldn't get out. I also hadn't eaten dinner the night before and was hungry.

“I kept calling to her to let me out and was told to just shut up. I asked my brothers to untie the door but they wouldn't - actually they couldn't - they knew what would happen to them if they did. I spent the whole morning and most of the afternoon in there - almost 24 hours - without food and without a bathroom. I eventually 'went' in the closet, I couldn't hold it anymore. I just sat and cried. I hated my life, I hated myself and most of all - I hated her.”

According to my my cousin, her mother's favorite expression was, “Shut up, you little bitch.”

As foster kids living in different and changing homes, I and my four younger siblings longed for our mother all during our childhoods. She never came for us and we could never understand why. Other kids had a mother; why didn't we? Every few years, she showed up for a quick visit, then vanished.

I asked my brother Reggie about his feelings about our mother when he was growing up. "Not a hell of a lot there," he said. "I didn't see her but a couple of times. I don't remember much about her." Reggie is shown below with our mother, in the only photo I know of the two of them together.

But then he did recall one incident. One day, he said, our mother drove up unannounced to his foster home. By now a boy of about ten, Reggie, came out of the house."I'm your mother," she said.

"No you're not," he said. "My mother is in the house." The foster mother inside was the only mother Reggie had ever known, though there was no love there; taking in foster kids for money was how she and her non-working husband paid the bills. Our mother promptly drove away.

And she stayed away. The five of us ended up spending our entire childhoods in foster care. All of us went on with our lives, finding our way in the world without the mother who gave birth to us. Today we have each other, our own families, homes, and successful lives – PLUS newly discovered aunts, uncles, and cousins.

For some unknown reason, perhaps a miracle or an act of God, the five of us seem to have broken with family tradition and achieved reasonably normal lives – though I know that my four younger siblings whisper that I have some way to go. And what you are reading may well prove their point.

Now we are old enough, secure enough, and happy enough to reflect upon this mother of ours, not in anger, not for retribution, but for the sake of the truth. The true story of our toxic mother can speak for itself, if only for the monumental question it poses: How could a mother give birth to five normal, healthy children and then abandon them for their entire childhoods and beyond?

When I was in my third year of college, my mother called out of the blue and said that she wanted to come up and see me play hockey. I was at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass. The call was a huge surprise and I had no idea what to make of it.

Since she gave me up at age six, I had seen her only two or three times. Now she was telling me that she wanted to start over as mother and son. This was incredibly appealing for a 22-year-old who had yearned for a mother all his life. I had a flash of a mother hugging and kissing me and telling me how proud she was of all I had achieved on my own.

She arrived at the game with her longtime companion, Lois. After the game, the three of us – my mother, Lois, and I – talked in my rented room off campus. We didn't talk for long before I, as politely as I could, cut it short. Every word out of her mouth was self-referenced.

She didn't ask a single question about me. She had no curiosity whatsoever about how I had survived all these years, how I managed to be in college on scholarship, what my life was like, or my plans for the future. It was so obvious to me that her self-love knew no bounds.

She didn't want to be my mother. She wanted me to be her son. She was not bringing me love. She was there looking for it. The only thing we had in common, it was clear to me, was that that we were in the same hospital room in Boston when I was born.

She was a walking and talking psychology textbook definition of the morbid narcissist: so full of herself, her life, and her needs, that there is no room for others – not even her own child. She lacked all empathy, the capacity to feel how another human being feels.

I needed no textbook to tell me this. I felt it.

At 22 --I had served two years on active duty in the Army -- I had learned how to take care of myself. Had to, from the age of 10 or 11. I could sense danger a mile away. This selfish stranger wanting to be my mother set my warning bells clanging like crazy. I smelled toxic fumes.

In the beginning, I had no choice in who my mother was. But now, owing her nothing, I did. I called her the next day and told her as kindly as I could that too much time had passed, that we now had separate lives, and that maybe we should just let things stay the way they were.

It was a short conversation. She didn't try to dissuade me. She hung up and disappeared, again. As the years rolled by, I rarely thought about her. Off and on, however, I did question my decision to cut the ties to my birth mother. I always concluded that I was better off without her in my life.

My brother Vic had much the same reaction to her that I did-- and came to the same conclusion. When I told him that I was writing about our mother and asked him for his thoughts, he sent me this:

George: Per our phone call, I offer the following regarding our mother:

My first encounter with our mother was when we went to a boarding school to visit her and our half brother Peter. I was but 12 or 13 yrs old. What struck me was her absolute coldness. She did not speak to me or even acknowledge my presence. The visit was very brief and very disappointing. I decided right there that she held no real feelings for me and I none for her. This meeting shaped my opinion of her from that day on.

My next encounter with her was when I joined the USMC. I received a letter from the Commandant of the Marine Corps. My mother had found out that when I joined the service, I claimed my foster parents (the Foleys) as my legal parents. She wrote a letter to the Commandant accusing me of lying on my enlistment contract because I did not claim her as my parent. She further demanded that my records be corrected and that she be provided a portion of my service pay for support.

The Commandant of the Marine Corps refused her request for record correction and support. When I became aware of her action, I was furious and decided right there that she had no interest in me but simply viewed me as a meal ticket. I had dealt with this idea (meal ticket) for years with my foster parents who saw me as the same ticket. I came to live with this idea with my foster parents, but my REAL mother now viewed me as no more than her meal ticket.

I met our mother two other times during my life, once at my Sister Marion's (another cold meeting), and once at her apartment (another cold meeting). I have always understood the attitude of my foster parents and readily accepted that I was not a family member but a family asset. But, for my own mother to be so cold, uncaring, self-centered, and greedy I will never understand.

I am now most thankful that it was my foster parents that helped raise me and not my mother. My mother was a non-mother who I feel would not have given me any direction or help in preparing for this world. My foster parents at least sent me to a good school and kept me fed while my brother Reggie was the most instrumental in teaching me togetherness and real survival skills.

It pains me to say that I had no mother because of her selfishness, and no Father because of early death, but in the end maybe that was for the best!!!!

Vic

For the record, our mother also wrote to Reggie's commanding office when he was in the U.S. Marine Corp trying to get a monthly family allotment. Ditto when I was on active duty in the U.S. Army. I couldn't believe it. When I asked the officer if he was sure, he showed me her letter. When I told the officer the story of our mother, he was appalled and threw her letter in the trash.

When my sister Ruby heard about our mother's attempt to get money while we were away in the service, she was furious and confronted her. She blasted her, saying "If you dropped dead now, I would walk on you."

We all let her go.

Decades later, Ruby's daughter Linda, a niece I love dearly and for whom family is everything, decided that she wanted to meet her "Grammy." After no little investigation, Linda learned that she was living alone in Boston, her companion Lois having died years before. Linda got in touch with her and went to see her.

She was now in her 80's, ailing, overweight, and all alone. Of that first meeting, Linda said, "She had no friends or family, absolutely no one. She said that she had given up, had nobody or no reason to live, and was getting ready to die."What she did have were closets full of clothes and dozens of pairs of shoes. Lois had left her well-off and so she could afford to go on regular shopping sprees. Her apartment was packed with stuff she had bought on TV shopping networks.

When Linda asked if she would like to see the five of us, she readily agreed. Linda then persuaded the five of us to meet with her. Although decades before, we had all decided that it was best to stay away from this toxic mother, we could not be unkind to a lonely old lady in poor health and with not a living soul who cared for her.

And so the five of us trooped to her apartment to meet her. I had toyed with the thought that she might apologize and ask our forgiveness or perhaps express some sorrow for all that we had suffered because of her. It was a foolish thought. What we heard was how hard her life had been, about her proud purchases, and small talk.

Mostly, we felt sorry for her for ending up with such an empty life. My sister Ruby and Linda were especially thoughtful of her. They encouraged her to move to Westborough, Mass. where she could be closer to them. After she moved, we began inviting her to family functions. Ruby and Linda pretty much accepted her into their lives.

Marion,Vic, Reggie, and I kept a wary distance. We were polite when we saw her, but our guards were up. It was not for no reason that we had survived all these years without a mother or family of any kind.

As a person, she was still the same – totally self-centered. Even Linda, who had warm thoughts of having a new Grammy, says that she was "demanding." Linda said, "I would call her and the first thing she would say is, 'You haven't called in a week.'"

When I did not send her a card for Mother's Day, I received an angry letter telling me that I was “cruel.” Across the top in large letters, she had scrawled, “the slaughter of mother.” I still have that letter.

Yet, as she lay dying in the hospital, I went there, along with Marion, Ruby, and Linda. When she took her last breath, Marion, Linda, and I were holding her hand. She did not die alone. She died with family at her bedside.

At her death, the trust left to her by Lois and on which our mother lived and shopped and ate in good restaurants, reverted to charity.

When I asked Marion what she would like to say about our mother, she said, "Just one thing. The bottom line is that when our mother died, you and I were there holding her hand and the two of us were crying like babies."

At her wake, organized by a women's group helping the familyless elderly, the large hall was pactically empty of mourners. I have never seen such an empty wake. The five of us were there plus a few women from the women's group and a couple of others.

One was a young man who had taken pity on her. He had looked in on her and did little chores and errands for her. She had told him, we learned, that her children had abandoned her. For the record, we let him know who had abandoned whom.

Upon reflection, I suppose that I probably did abandon my mother. But I did so because my survival instincts told me that she was toxic and would only cause me harm. I couldn't afford a toxic mother and neither could my four younger siblings.

In my novel, “State Kid: Hero of Literacy” my mother was the model for the chapter entitled, “The Mother From Hell.” 

Finally, after giving up the five of us, our mother remarried and gave birth to another child, Peter --- our half-brother. We found out about him when he was a teenager. He spent the first couple of years with our mother and his father before they were divorced. After that, he lived off and on with our mother and her longtime companion, Lois Simon, and an uncle.

Peter spent more time with our mother than any of us. What kind of mother was she to him? Only he would know. He is now a grey-bearded grandfather living in Maine and running his own taxi business in Boston. I had only met him once or twice over the years and we had no ongoing relationship.

Nevertheless, I called him and asked him what he had to say about our mother. Quickly getting over the shock of my call and the brassy question, he said, "Nothing good." And then he went on to tell me of skin-crawling horrors inflicted upon him by our mother.

"I'm lucky to be alive," he said.

Next time, Peter's story.

So long and keep moving.

Comments welcome. Send to: pollock.george@gmail.com. For info on my background and books, click here.

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NOTE: Something Tells Her, my new e-book, is now available on Amazon.  

Jane is abandoned as a baby and raised in multiple horrific foster homes. After her latest abuse, a sexual advance from her latest foster parent, she screams "NO!" and runs out the door Twelve years old, on the street, alone, no family, nobody, no money, how can she possibly survive? She can't -- except that Jane  is no ordinary foster kid. She doesn't understand "can't." Read excerpts.

Amazon  E-Books by George Pollock

"State Kid: Hero of Literacy" is fiction based on his  real-life experiences  growing up in foster homes; "Last Laughs," is the true story of how five foster kids (he and four younger siblings) found their way in life and each other. "Killers: Surprises in a Maximum Security Prison," is the story of the author being locked up for 23 hours with killers in a maximum security prison;  "I, Cadaver" is about the author's postmortem adventures and mischief in the anatomy lab at UMass Medical School. “A Beautiful Story” demonstrates the art and process of creative writing as a 16-year-old boy goes all out to write a story good enough to get him into an exclusive college -- on full scholarship; and "A Long, Happy, Healthy Life," which lays out what to do (and not do) to live the title every single day.

  For the Nook:

A Beautiful Story
A Long, Happy, Healthy Life
I, Cadaver
Killers
State Kid
Unlove Story