Her father tried to molest her, but she wouldn't let him. Her older sister had been molested, or at least she suspected so. The sister sought therapy later in life, she never did. She lost herself in books. Reading was her escape. She was bounced up two grade levels early in her schooling because of her grasp of the written word.
She had a tendency to slump a little as she was not the perfect 5'2" but a lanky 5'10". She left the state of California for Colorado. The University of Colorado at Boulder to be exact. She graduated at the end of WWII with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Geology. She came back to California and joined a geology club. It was on one of the club's field trips that she met him. Six foot tall, another geology major, but out of UCLA. She was smitten.
After a two year courtship they married. She was 25, he was 27. She never told him about her father. She never really talked to him at all. After six years of marriage and lots of disparaging remarks from both sets of in-laws they decided it was time to produce a family. She decided to have a boy, and then a girl. She did not know that God smiled upon her when she had first her son and then 15 months later her daughter. Her son was born with autism and needed special care and attention. The daughter was bright, curious, inventive. She was always too busy to "come see what I made, Mommy!"
"Not now, I'm reading/doing a puzzle/gardening." The little girl did not get the attention she so desperately wanted. Nor did the daughter get praise for good grades. She felt that she couldn't give the same praise to her son so she withheld it from the daughter.
And, since the father knew nothing of his father-in-law's peccadillo, he never thought twice about dropping both kids off at her folks' for babysitting while they spent the weekend out of town. Now the daughter got attention. He found another woman, and seven years into the affair finally left his family with a new one shortly on the way. She hated him. She hated her father. She hated men. So she moved her family away, but the son stayed behind. Now it was just she and her daughter.
He daughter grew as tall as her father. Whereas the daughter sought therapy in her forties, the mother stayed with the same mind set and problems that drove away her husband. She has no coping mechanisms. She can only get mad, break down in tears, or slam doors. She's enabled the son who moved in to be a lazy slug. The daughter is trying to live her life the best way she knows how.
She still ignores the daughter, not even bothering to look up from her Sudoku puzzle or other logic brain twisters, or her book. The daughter gives up. And she is alone.
