It fits the assignment. I have to interview my mother. So, first, where were your parents born?
Mom
My mother was born in San Francisco, and my father was born in Kansas City, Missouri
Larissa
Ok, and where were you born?
Mom
San Rafael, California
Larissa
All right. So what differences did you notice between your mother and yourself, generation wise and personality wise.
Mom
Wow, differences between us were so numerous that you would think we were not related. I mean you think you and I are different, and we are, but we do like some of the same things, and have some of the same values. The likenesses between me and my parents were only skin deep. My mother was the youngest of 7 children born during the depression, and she was used to getting everything she wanted. She was spoiled rotten. She had a twin brother and she was the darling of the family. Your great-grandfather was rich at the beginning of the depression, so his family never went without, but he was back to window washing by the end of it. My mother always had her family. I was an only child, and did not even know who my family was until I was about 7. Then when I was eight, my mother left.
Mom got up to refill the coffees, and get two bowls from the fridge.)
Larissa
Perohe?
Mom
Yep. You're going to stay for supper of course?
Larissa
Oh yes. So what happened after your mother left?
Mom
Well nothing so much really changed. I never had a stable home. I had only been with them not quite three years. So I started the rounds of relatives again, until I got fed up, and demanded to be a ward of the court. I ran away when I was thirteen, got caught, and had a long talk with the judge. It's a good thing for me I got one of the good ones. So I spent the last five years of school in a boarding home for girls run by nuns.
Larissa
The relatives, were they your mother's or father's?
Mom
Mostly my mother's. She had six brothers and sisters. I stayed with all but one of them. Uncle Bob I don't even remember at all. I just remember his name. I stayed with Grandma Ross, her mother, and my Aunt Phyllis and cousin Cookie for a year or so before I was five. I also stayed with her brother, Uncle Bill and his wife, Aunt Reete, and their kids. I was really close to my cousin Bunny for a long time. She was my age. Her real name was Rita. She had a bunch of brothers.
A stayed only a short time with Uncle Ken, my mother's twin brother, and I don't remember his wife's name. I was with Uncle Don, her brother, and Aunt Nancy and their kids about a year. Uncle Don was the only man in my family that I wasn't afraid of. He never tried to touch me. I spent the most time with my Aunt Valeria. I was with her before I was four for nearly a year with Uncle Alden, her husband at the time, and fifty boys on a ranch. The boys were delinquents, I think. She married one of the, Uncle Bart, after she divorced Alden. I stayed with her a year in San Francisco, and two years later on in Petaluma. I ran away when she started to get a little nuts. I heard she was insane when she died.
Larissa
So that's why you are so independent? You had to be?
Mom
Oh yes, I didn't get anything I didn't go after myself. My mother was totally dependent upon a man.
Even when she left, she left with a man. My father's boss. Me, I grew up totally independent. I was never in any one place long enough for the brainwashing to stick. I was the first in my family to get a degree. My mother and father both had high school diplomas, but my mother's ambition was solely to be taken care of by a man. I doubt if she ever had a single thought for developing her own talents.
Larissa
Why do you think she was the way she was? Why did she leave you and your father?
Mom
Oh I think it was her family mostly, and my father, I mean the whole idea of marriage and children must have seemed wonderful to her then, until she was alone with him and me. They used to fight all the time. I'd hear them at night. I didn't know then...
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