Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hi, everyone, this is Dawn Klem, and you are on my podcast, Milkweed and Monarchs.
[00:00:08] I realized when I was going back over the list of stories that I've been sharing with everyone that I haven't really talked that much about my mom and my brother.
[00:00:21] There is a reason for that, believe me.
[00:00:25] I. But I would not be the person I am if it were not for my mom and my brother.
[00:00:32] So today I'm going to talk a little bit about my brother and my mother. Together they were kind of inseparable kind of thing. It's hard to distinguish between the two of them.
[00:00:47] So we grew up in the 60s and. And it was during a time, at least I know this is true of my family, my mother's family especially, where boys were the best thing since sliced bread.
[00:01:06] So when a woman was pregnant, everybody was really hoping that it was going to be a boy. It was a big deal.
[00:01:14] We had my mom and four sisters, and two out of the five were able to have male children.
[00:01:27] But two of the other women suffered miscarriages of male children, and the other one never even conceived a male child.
[00:01:39] So the two that conceived male children and miscarriage them, that was very traumatic for not only for the woman, but because of the pressure that was placed on them. I believe this is my personal opinion from the family that they needed to produce male children.
[00:02:06] It's kind of interesting when you think about it, because they weren't going to carry on my mom's maiden name because they were all married to somebody else and had a different last name. But nonetheless, it was a big deal to have male children.
[00:02:26] So when my mom had me first, I think it was a little bit of a disappointment for her. She never said it out loud, but.
[00:02:36] But when I tell you some of the stories, you'll understand why I feel that way.
[00:02:41] And I.
[00:02:43] She got pregnant again and we were very close in age. My brother and I were only 15 months apart.
[00:02:51] So she got pregnant with him right away. And then she was ecstatically happy that she had my brother. Well, my brother was small.
[00:03:03] I think he was only weighed like six pounds and some odd ounces. He wasn't a big baby.
[00:03:10] I was 7 pounds, like 10 ounces or something like that. But he was probably a pound smaller than me and he was sickly as a child.
[00:03:21] It was during the time where you had the croup tents and he had bronchitis. Of course, both of my parents smoked then. I'm sure my mom smoked their whole entire pregnancy with both of us. That was very common. Back then, nobody even thought a thing of it.
[00:03:39] So to make a long story short, my brother was pretty sickly. He was under that croup tent a lot in the early years. I kind of remember it. It's hard to believe that I do, but I do. I have memories all the way back when I was 4 years old. And I remember him being in that croup tent.
[00:04:03] So anyhow, what came out of that is my mom and dad were very overprotective of my brother right out of the gate because he had been so sickly.
[00:04:17] Now, what does that mean, overprotective? Right.
[00:04:21] Well, what that means is they didn't want him to do much.
[00:04:27] You have to remember you're talking to the dis. The disgruntled older sister, especially speaking here.
[00:04:34] But that really is the truth. They babied him unbelievably.
[00:04:40] He never, ever mowed the lawn. My dad would not want him to mow the lawn. My dad was very good. He had good carpenter skills and he could build a lot of things.
[00:04:53] And he never really allowed my brother to help him with anything at all.
[00:05:00] And so I think my brother became pretty spoiled because of that and because he had been so sickly. My mom definitely favored him. There's no doubt about that. Zero doubt. All the way up until the bitter end, my mom favored my brother over me, and she never made any claims otherwise.
[00:05:21] It's just the way it was, get used to it kind of thing.
[00:05:26] Well, because of that, I think my brother went down the path of not really being.
[00:05:35] I don't know how to put it. I don't want it to sound like I'm so negative, but, I mean, it is the truth. He had a dark side to him. I mean, I had a good friend once that told me my brother was the classic person that had the devil on one side of his shoulder and the angel on the other side. He had the potential to be so good, but when it came right down to it, he would always go towards the side of the devil. And I think that is kind of true.
[00:06:08] It's very, very true.
[00:06:11] He was difficult to get along with. He had been spoiled. He wasn't asked to do anything.
[00:06:20] I remember especially, like, you know, I would have to, like, get that. My mom started working when I was in the fourth grade, so it became my responsibility to come home after school and clean up the breakfast dishes, vacuum, and make sure the house was in order. My brother, on the other hand, just sat on the couch and watched TV the whole entire time.
[00:06:46] It got to the point where she would be like, can you start dinner? So, like, in the fifth grade, I'm like, dethawing the hamburger and starting to make a meatloaf. I mean, it wasn't much. I didn't mind it. But what I was annoyed about is why was it always me? And he never did a thing to help me out. And he didn't have to do any chores around the house. He just wasn't expected to. He never mowed the lawn the whole entire time I was growing up.
[00:07:14] He just wasn't expected to do much.
[00:07:19] So I would get so frustrated. I was so frustrated with him most of the time because I just felt like we were living in two separate households. I felt like I was the servant and he was the king. That's basically is what I think about him.
[00:07:41] And I remember certain things. Of course, if you've been following me, you know that we went to my grandparents every summer. Well my grandma and grandpa felt the same way about my brother. They thought he was the most spectacular thing.
[00:07:57] His name was Nick, and my grandpa called him Nicodemus o'. Malley. We always laughed at that. But he just thought he was the greatest kid, you know? I know when we went to Bible school, he was always so good in the church. And every year, like I said previously, he would always have asked to have Jesus in his heart. He needed to ask him four or five times.
[00:08:24] Believe me, he needed to, because that's how he was. He was always on the edge.
[00:08:31] But I was always in trouble. I always did something wrong to my poor brother.
[00:08:37] According to my grandma and my mother, I was a terrible sister.
[00:08:42] And some of the things that would happen is this ( And it's so funny too) , because he was always the king of ideas, and I was always the one that would go along with everything.
[00:08:52] So, for instance, we had some old barrels that were in the barn. And he was like, hey, wouldn't it be fun if I got in the barrel and you rolled me down the hill? I. And I go, okay, yeah, that sounds like a good idea to me. Not thinking a thing of it. It's not like the hill was so big in front of the house. You would have thought it was like a big hill at the field house. But it was nothing like that. It was just a little rolling hill.
[00:09:22] So he gets in the. The barrel and I'm rolling him down the hill. And my grandma comes out and she's like, what are you doing? I go, I'm rolling him down the hill. She's like, oh, my gosh. You should be ashamed of yourself. Do you know he could get hurt that way? Of course, he'd get out of the barrel and act like I didn't want to, Grandma. It was all her idea. Totally bogus. Totally, totally bogus. Okay. He was an operator from an early age. I suppose you knew if you were carried on a pedestal that you could say or do just about anything and get away with it. And that is how he was.
[00:10:05] The other thing that happened at my grandma's house is we always would go out to the barn. We spent a lot of time in the barn. The barn had a loft. We had a rope, and we would swing on that rope out into the big part of the barn. We would have big hail bays up there or bales of hay up there, and we would make forts and stuff, and we had a lot of fun. But off from the side of the barn was a little area where they would store grain.
[00:10:34] And a lot of times we would climb up that ladder and we would jump into the grain bin because it'd be filled with grain.
[00:10:41] So of course, we're out there in the barn and he says, hey, let's go jump into the grain bin. I'm like, yeah, completely his idea. Of course, I'm going along with it. He climbs right up the ladder. I yell, jump. I do take credit for that. He jumps without looking. And if he would have looked, he would have seen that the grain room was completely empty.
[00:11:09] So he jumped down and he bit his tongue. I shouldn't laugh. It was funny to me. Now when I look back, he bit his tongue. His tongue started bleeding. We had to take him to the emergency room. He had to get a special ointment for. For it. Because he had a gash in his tongue. My grandma was so mad at me, and of course he blamed me for it. That was so classic. It was always my fault. Anytime he came up with the big idea and I would get in trouble for it because he inevitably got hurt.
[00:11:49] Probably the worst thing that happened, though, is when we were probably.
[00:11:54] I know I was at least in the second grade grade, so he was probably in the first grade.
[00:12:01] And we were at our house in. On river street in Hillsdale, and one of our friends was over there with us, Marianne. And we. My brother loved comic books. They were just the best thing since sliced bread to him. He would read every comic book there was then all the Superman comic books. He would rip the COVID off and he would paste it on the wall in his bedroom. His bedroom, if you went in there was like A giant comic book with all the covers. So he just loved those comic books. Well, Marianne and I, we got tired of him always, you know, never being in trouble and us always being in trouble. So one night, we decided to take his comic books away from him.
[00:12:54] We started running through the house. So we run out the front door, and he's behind us, yelling at us, of course. And he puts his hand through the glass window of the door. That wouldn't have been so bad, but he pulled his hand back, and it was a big gash in his arm, and he had to go to the emergency room to get sewn up.
[00:13:20] Oh, my God. My mom was so mad at me.
[00:13:25] Like, the whole thing was my fault. I mean, yes, we were teasing him, but we didn't tell him, put your arm through a glass door. We managed to make it through the door without doing it.
[00:13:38] Whatever. He ended up getting 26 stitches in his arm.
[00:13:43] And he told me, I can't tell you how many times how lucky he was because it was so close to hitting an artery.
[00:13:54] I must have heard that story for the next ten years at least. And even until he was an adult, even later on, as an adult, he did end up with a little scar on his wrist. But as he got older, it was nothing.
[00:14:11] In the beginning, it looked. It was a long scar, I gotta admit. But as he got older, it shrunk up.
[00:14:18] He didn't hesitate to use that scar against me. And believe me, my mom gave me the evil eye every time he talked about that scar on his arm.
[00:14:33] I was the terrible person, and he was the. The saint.
[00:14:40] Now, why am I telling you this?
[00:14:42] I'm telling you this because what really came out of this story is that he.
[00:14:51] Since he was never held accountable, since he was never really asked to do anything, he turned out to be someone with very little motivation in his life.
[00:15:05] And he always felt like he could get away with things.
[00:15:13] And there's a lot of things he did that were wrong. And he was never, ever held accountable to any of it.
[00:15:21] None of it. And I was always the one that got in trouble.
[00:15:27] It probably sounds like I'm bitter, but it's been a long time.
[00:15:32] I personally got over all of it. I think that probably because I joined the Navy and I lived away most of my life as an adult, that I just never had to deal with him again.
[00:15:47] I kept trying to get along with him.
[00:15:50] I offered to pay for him to go back to college, even an associate degree. I said, oh, I can. I would definitely put you back to college. I'LL help you out. Then you can continue you on your path to be a manager. You know, I tried everything, but he just did not like me. And he did so many things that were just wrong.
[00:16:14] Some of the things that I remember the most were when I graduated from high school. One of my good friends had gotten me a bottle of Charlie perfume, which was popular back then.
[00:16:29] And like, you know, a week later, the. The perfume's missing, right?
[00:16:34] And, oh, guess what he gave his girlfriend for her birthday. A bottle of Charlie perfume. We all know where the Charlie perfume came from. It came from me, okay? But my mom and dad did nothing about it, even though I told them.
[00:16:50] The other thing was I was working at the 99 Restaurant.
[00:16:55] I made a lot of money in tips and it was always in change. So I would keep a big Ziploc bag of the coins and just keep it in the top drawer of my dresser.
[00:17:10] He stole all the money.
[00:17:13] It definitely wasn't my mom and dad, so, you know, it was him. He stole all the money. I tried to tell my mom and dad about that.
[00:17:22] Trying to tell him, look at what he did. Look at what he did. No, they weren't going to look at it. He got away with it even though they knew it was right what I was telling them.
[00:17:34] But the worst thing he did is one morning, There were actually two mornings.
[00:17:40] One morning I woke up and I had a dresser with a mirror attached to it. And on the top of the mirror it said, said in my lipstick, I see you. And I've been watching you.
[00:17:54] I'm like, what the heck?
[00:17:57] I'm trying to tell my mom, look what he wrote on my dresser. Totally ignored it like it didn't even happen. Oh, that'll come off. Just, you know, little Windex, spray it off, brother.
[00:18:09] And then the next thing that happened, he walked into my room. And you know how you're sound asleep? I was sound asleep in bed.
[00:18:18] And you know, all of a sudden you're waking up because you know someone's looking at you.
[00:18:23] Well, that was what was happening.
[00:18:26] I open my eyes up and there's my brother pointing a gun at me. I am not kidding you.
[00:18:33] He was pointing a gun right at me.
[00:18:36] And I'm like, oh, my God. I'm like, what are you doing in my room? And why do you have that gun?
[00:18:45] And he just laughed like this evil laugh. And then he turned around and walked out.
[00:18:53] I tried talking to my parents about that.
[00:18:56] Nothing, absolutely nothing, nothing came of that at all. I'll tell you what came of it. I Said, I'm moving out.
[00:19:05] And that day I packed up my stuff and I moved out of the house.
[00:19:10] I said, I'm not gonna live here. I can't deal with this. I'm gonna go live with one of my friends for now.
[00:19:18] I was at the point where I was thinking about going to college because I had my friend that was trying to get me to go to Western.
[00:19:28] So I was thinking, I'll move out, and then I'll get ready to go to college. I can come back home and get my stuff and get ready.
[00:19:40] But in the meantime, what came out of that story was my dad was going all over town in Hillsdale telling everybody my daughter moved out. I can't believe my daughter just moved out of the house. And I'm thinking, what the heck? You've. You've been letting this stuff go on for years, Years and years and years. You've never held him accountable, and you're trying to blame me for moving out.
[00:20:14] I was pretty much done at that point in my life. That was just it for me.
[00:20:21] I don't know. I never got along with my brother again. I mean, I don't think I really did get along with him ever, that I can really remember, because my mom held us to a completely different standard.
[00:20:38] Now, if I look back on that, I think that really was part of the times back then.
[00:20:46] I really do think it was. And the importance of having a son. But I think some of it was also because he was sickly.
[00:20:56] So then they became overprotective of him, and so they never really pushed him to do the right thing.
[00:21:07] I joined the Navy, and then a year later, he joined the Navy, but he didn't even make it through boot camp. And he got discharged because he said he didn't want to work with the Marines. And they never told him that he would have to. So he got out of his contract.
[00:21:25] This is what I'm talking about with him. He quit everything he did. He had the potential to be incredible, but when the going got tough, he would just quit because he never had to work that hard. He never had to grow up.
[00:21:46] So by babying him, I believe they ended up creating this monster.
[00:21:55] There's a couple things that happened later on that I was like, mom, are you ever going to own up to the fact that this is the person you raised? Are you going to ever get over that part?
[00:22:12] Just say it out loud to me. God, I would feel so much better.
[00:22:16] But she couldn't, so. So what happened was his oldest daughter got pregnant. They were Going to have a baby shower.
[00:22:27] And they lived up in Sault Ste. Marie in the Upper Peninsula. And so Craig, my husband, and I agreed to go down to Hills to pick her up and then drive her back up to Sault Ste. Marie so we could all go to her baby shower together. We were all very excited about going to this baby shower.
[00:22:50] My brother had been down to visit my mom. It was probably, you know, a month or two before that. He never came to Hillsdale very often.
[00:23:00] He never visited her on a regular basis.
[00:23:04] And so, you know, that was very disappointing to my mom. And she complained to me about it many, many times.
[00:23:13] But we went down there and we picked her up and we got, we decided to stay in a hotel cuz we didn't want to overburden them during an event like this.
[00:23:23] And when we got to, we got situated in the hotel and we went over to their house for dinner.
[00:23:30] They had the whole house, you know, fixed up because they were expecting company.
[00:23:36] And everywhere you looked was my mom's brass.
[00:23:41] While my mom had been collecting brass for years, she had candlesticks and pitchers and knickknacks, all different kinds of brass.
[00:23:54] And she had had a house fire and so she had packed a lot of that stuff up and just put it in the basement.
[00:24:03] Well, my, when my brother came to visit her, he took that box of brass.
[00:24:09] She would have given it to him. She would have gladly given it to him, but he never asked her. One time he just took the brass and acted like it was his to have.
[00:24:24] And we get back to the hotel. I'll never forget. Because she's like, did you see all my brass out there? I go, yeah, looks so nice, mom. That was nice of you to give it to him. I didn't give it to him. She says, I didn't even know he had it. Well, are you gonna talk to him about it? No, probably not. Well, this is why we're in the situation that we're in.
[00:24:47] This is it.
[00:24:49] This is totally the reason why he, he just did not even think twice about taking the brass from my mom or even talking to her about it at all, period.
[00:25:12] I let it go. I'm like, this doesn't really have anything to do with me. If she's not going to take it on, I'm not going to either. Why do I have to be the heavy? He already dislikes me greatly.
[00:25:24] But the final straw for me really came when my mom had had a heart attack.
[00:25:30] I stayed with her and got her through the hospital stay and then she Came home, back home to Hillsdale. And my youngest daughter and I went down there. I stayed for a week. Then my youngest daughter stayed for a week. And then I called my brother, and I said, it's time for you to come down and stay. My mom was so happy he came.
[00:25:55] So he came down, and they would have my mom's sister come over, and my brother would cook for him. They would laugh. They were so. All so happy to be together, the three of them. They had a wonderful, wonderful time.
[00:26:09] And I was so happy because I thought, he needs to be down there. He needs to show her how much he cares about her.
[00:26:17] And so I thought I was just, like, taking a breath of relief, a sigh of relief, I should say. I'm back at work, and I'm happy that my mom is being looked after.
[00:26:28] Well, he decides to go back home, and about six hours after he's left, my telephone rings. I have just gotten out of work, and I'm driving home.
[00:26:42] I'm like, oh, hi, Mom. How's everything going? Did Nick get out of there okay? She says, you're never going to believe what happened. And I said, what?
[00:26:52] She says, don, I went to the freezer today. So she just had a refrigerator with a freezer on top. But my mom was one of those people. I mean, they were raised during the Depression, so anytime there was a sale at Kroger's on meat or anything, she would buy things. She. She had it stocked with steaks and roast beef and chicken. She even froze cheese, I swear to God. So anything that was on sale, she would always buy two or three of, and then she'd stock her freezer up.
[00:27:23] So apparently she went to go to her freezer to get something out, and the freezer was completely empty. I go, what. What are you talking about? She goes, your brother took all the food. I go, did you know? She said, no. He said to me, mom, I'm going to clean the kitchen, and I'm going to vacuum the living room. I'm going to get your house all in order. You just go upstairs and you rest.
[00:27:49] So she said, he had the vacuum going. I didn't think a thing of it. And apparently while I was resting upstairs, he was cleaning the house and emptying out my freezer.
[00:28:02] Is there anything left in there? She said, no. He took everything. He even took the cheese. I'm like, oh, my God.
[00:28:11] I. I could not even. And every time I think about it now, st. Still to this day, I'm like, what is the matter with you?
[00:28:23] I did not confront Him. Why am I going to confront him?
[00:28:27] It's between her and him.
[00:28:30] He's the re. He was the way he was because she allowed him to be that way.
[00:28:38] And I am not going to be the heavy. I just. I just got over it.
[00:28:44] Said this is not for me to take on. I'm not taking on this burden anymore.
[00:28:51] You love him so much, but this is how he treats you.
[00:28:56] I could probably launch into a million other events, but why?
[00:29:01] You heard the ones, the main ones today.
[00:29:05] It's a disturbing story. I know it is, but it is the facts.
[00:29:12] And I think, you know, it's okay. It's okay to give your children responsibility.
[00:29:20] It's okay to make them help you in the kitchen or even do yard work, even if he couldn't mow the lawn as well as my dad would have wanted him to. Let him try. Let him get out there and do something.
[00:29:37] By letting him do nothing, this is what we ended up with.
[00:29:43] And I know if you know me and you know my brother, you're going to hear the story and think, oh, my God.
[00:29:49] And I get that.
[00:29:51] But that is part of who I am.
[00:29:55] He was my brother, and really, he is part of the reason why I left and I went out and I made my own path in this world.
[00:30:06] He is definitely part of that reason.
[00:30:09] So he's passed away now.
[00:30:12] And if I think about him, I think, you know what? Thank you for pushing me to get out of the nest and get on with my life.
[00:30:24] And there but for the grace go I.
[00:30:29] So he did me a favor, and so did my parents.
[00:30:33] But for all you parents and grandparents out there, let your kids have a little responsibility.
[00:30:46] Thank you for listening to my story today.
[00:30:51] I think it's good for you to hear some of the dark side of me, too. I mean, I got through a lot of this, but it was hard. Not gonna lie.
[00:31:02] There's. There are other things that went on that aren't even worth talking about. I'm just trying to move past all of it and keep it sectioned off.
[00:31:11] And maybe when I write my book, I might elaborate a little more.
[00:31:17] It's good to release the negativity.
[00:31:25] Until the next time.
