Ailantha
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Some New Information

3/24/2014

0 Comments

 
    After reading my sister Romaine's comment that my grandmother Florence's parents at one point came back for her I called my mother yesterday to ask her about it.
    My mother said that, yes , her mother did  tell her that her father once came to take her back.
   One day sometime before before the Lubignac's fled
to Kentucky Pierre showed up at Nanny Stanton's door to take Florence home.  And Florence wanted with all her heart to leave Nanny Stanton's and go back to her own  family.  But she was so angry at her parents and so hurt that they gave her away that she refused to go with her father, who then left without her. 
     I wonder if  Florence's refusal to go with her father was just the acting out of a childish wish to punish her parents?  I wonder if she was holding out for her father to coax her, to make her go so that she could hold on to her anger until she was ready to let it go?  Did she believe that her father would surely come back for her again and that next time, though still making her displeasure known, she would agree to leave with him?
    But her father never again came back for her.  And as he walked away from his daughter for the last time did Pierre Lubignac feel his sorrow mixed with some portion of relief?
    Who can know?   When it comes to our feelings we human beings can be so gray  and conflicted, so twisted around our emotions  that in our minds we can barely find our way from point A to point B.  Who among us has never at one time or another ruminated over and over again over what we should have done?
    But to me  there is one grand irony to this story, and it's this;
    When 9-year-old Florence Lubignac was, in my mother's words, being passed around like a playing card, she had no voice in her fate;  what she wanted was not factored in, either by her fraught parents or by self-serving Nanny Stanton. 
    And yet this time, when her father should have been as firm in taking her home as he'd been in giving her away, when Nanny Stanton should have cast her back as aggressively as she'd reeled her in,  all the adults stood weakly or selfishly by and put upon this child the burden of making a decision that should not have been hers to make.
    Of course who knows if, for all the hardship she suffered, Florence didn't end up better off  as Nanny Stanton's ill-used servant than she might have in her own unstable family?  Who knows?
    Still, as my grandmother told my mother many times, "I would never give up one of my children.  Not if I were down to my last crust of bread.
   My grandmother told my mother that she believed that her mother Virginia Lubignac ended up in a mental institution over the grief and remorse she suffered for giving away her daughter.  I believe it, too.
To be continued...

NB:  I'm in Los Angeles this week so my posts will pop up about three hours later than usual!
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    "Equal And Opposite Reactions"
     by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
    Picture
    ​"Hail Mary"
    by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
    Picture
    "Tropical Depression" 
    by Patti Liszkay
    ​Buy it on Amazon:   
    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

    RSS Feed

    I am a traveler just visiting this planet and reporting various and sundry observations,
    hopefully of interest to my fellow travelers.

    Categories

    All


























































































  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact