Life's events give you interesting things to blog about. Attending my grandmother's funeral was a great opportunity to learn a bit more about my grandmother's early years...the years she never wanted to talk about.

She was born the oldest of what became 5 children to a 16 year-old girl and her often philandering husband. My grandmother had told stories of her early childhood living in a slum and begging at the back door of a restaurant for food. When she was 8 or 9, her mother (who had been abandoned by her father at this point) took her to a department store and "gave her" to a couple after asking "Don't you want to go live on the farm with these people? They have plenty of food." So, my grandmother became a foster child. At age 10, she learned of her mother's death (likely in childbirth with her youngest brother).

While my grandmother went to "foster care", her other siblings went to the orphanage, and were quickly adopted. Her brother did fine in his home. But her sister, who was two at the time of the adoption, was at first precocious, and by the time she hit puberty, out-of-control. The couple struggled mightily to discipline my Aunt (who we called Tootsie). As Aunt Tootsie's story was told this weekend, it became extremely apparent -- Aunt Tootsie had attachment disorder. Besides being prone to extreme tantrumming and acts of violence against her adoptive parents, Tootsie was a master manipulator. In high school she convinced the art teacher that her parents were cruel to her, and the art teacher insisted upon taking her in. The beleaguered parents quickly agreed. The poor teacher was in for a horrible time until my Aunt Tootsie graduated high school and was able to leave her home.

Aunt Tootsie, while loads of fun to us great nieces, was a troubled soul. Failed marriages and a son who committed suicide were Aunt Tootsie's fate, or perhaps her legacy.

As a child, and even until I adopted LuLu, I had no frame of reference to understand what had happened to my grandmother and her siblings. I wrote off my grandmother's stubbornness, temper flare-ups, and fierce independence to personality traits, when in fact they were survival behaviors from a much harder time.

My grandmother also struggled with relationships and her struggles impacted my mother. They had a true "love-hate" relationship. My grandmother could so completely decimate my mother with one word from her sharp tongue and affection toward my mother was very difficult for my grandmother to show.

She was, however, totally able to shower us grandchildren with the affection she never received and had never been able to give before. I, being the oldest, was truly the center of her universe. The picture above is her holding me shortly after I was born. My younger sister would want me to tell you that grandma was the same age in that picture as I am now (I guess implying that I'm old enough to be a grandmother -- NOT!)

Viewing my grandmother's life through the filter of adoption/foster care and attachment disorder, I am able to realize that these issues have existed forever -- at least for the past 90 years. Back then, much was written off to personality traits, character flaws, or genetically coming from "those people". While in modern times we still struggle with those stereotypical opinions, we do know so much more about the emotional health of children and about what needs to be done to help traumatized children heal.