Gail lived with us for several months when I was five years old.
Gail was 15 years old at the time, an avid 1970s free spirit, a pot smoker, and magnet for young men who loved to tinker with cars in our front yard. Gail moved in her album collection too, along with copious amounts of cheap perfume, a spirit of sex, stolen moments… and dark nail polish. She smoked and wore really awesome bell bottoms, headdresses and cool hippie denim too.
My mom and dad were newly separated, my dad now living in Marlborough, Mass. My mom, my brother, and me were living in a rental of the top two floors of a haunted house in Westerly (more on that house in a future post1).
My mom was doing a bit of social work, or otherwise helping families besides ours. A former nurse who later transitioned to a becoming a psychotherapist, my mom had found out about Gail that first year she was parenting on her own. Gail’s mom had thrown her out of her house for various and wildly embarrassing teenage misbehaviors.
So Gail came to live with us and helped out like a live-in babysitter to a five year old me and nine year old Henry. She stayed less than a year.
I absolutely adored her.
“Are they your boyfriends?” I’d giggle to her, flipping through her albums. Bridge Over Troubled Water2 by Simon & Garfunkel caught my attention. I thought Garfunkel’s hair was odd and had to know why she carried around photos of these guys who were less than attractive in my eyes.
“No, if they were my boyfriends, I’d be rich,” she replied.
“Ah.”
One day while mom was driving Gail and me in the red Beetle, Gail was smoking as usual, and I just had to take my imitation to the next place. I was already wearing dark nail-polish courtesy of Gail, probably smelled of a tannic brew of Emeraude Eau de Cologne and Jean Naté. Thankfully, the windows were open.
I guess I thought I’d try some imitating some other things Gail did too: so I asked to smoke. My mom said a surprising okay, and Gail passed me a cigarette and helped me light it. I can remember the excitement to this day: lighter sparking, fire in my face, just like Gail.
My mother tells this story years later, with her eyes open with odd pride and the caught embarrassment of obvious rebellion. She reported later she her five year old daughter would smoke and cough and feel yucky, never to want to do so again.
Instead, I smiled at the other drivers and Westerly pedestrians in the carefully laid out streets, puffing with pride: a smelly, polished, smoking kindergartner riding around with Gail and Mary, puffing away…
#LoveYaMom #GailWasAForce #LikeASister
I remember my pride and delight, watching smoke, staring at my fingernails, and the feeling of the open car window breeze while my mom may have tried to hide me.
- That house was researched and reported to perhaps be a stop on the Underground Railroad. My mom looked into the phenomena via the Westerly Library and town hall after others said they saw the ghost I had. I’d need to find that documentation to claim it as true, but this is a loose story of recollections, so letting that go for now. ↩︎
- Another bridge-related mommess post is here ↩︎