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    Swinging Between The Poles
    Swinging Between The Poles
    Swinging Between The Poles
    Ebook109 pages1 hour

    Swinging Between The Poles

    By Linda Rae Blair

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    About this ebook

    If you don't know what Bipolar Disorder means to the sufferer or those around him/her, this is for you. Here's how it has affected my life and that of those around me. With therapy, age and medication we can survive--even thrive!

    The author has written over 20 novels, but this time has given us insight into her childhood when depression began, on into her teen years when the mood swings began to openly manifest themselves, and into old age where she is finally able to control the symptoms and live a life of value and stability.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLinda Rae Blair
    Release dateMay 27, 2013
    ISBN9781301774616
    Swinging Between The Poles
    Author

    Linda Rae Blair

    Raleigh artist, Linda Rae Blair was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. She has used her knowledge gained during extensive travel throughout the United States and her passion for art, history, mysteries, and scenery to create compact novels with rich characters so real you'll miss them when they're gone and places you'll swear you've been. She has lived in Seattle, WA, Monterey Bay, CA, Cincinnati, OH, and retired five years ago in the Raleigh, NC area.Her love of history is well-earned. She is a direct descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of Mayflower fame. She is also descended from a strong line of Scots-Irish immigrants to America in the 1700s. She even had a great uncle who was robbed by the infamous outlaw Belle Starr.Her Scottish love story, “Elusive”, spans 200 years of Scottish history and intrigue via setting in 1700s Scotland and early 1900s Paris and Scotland.An avid reader who inhales novels by Nora Roberts, Sandra Brown and others in the romance/mystery genres, her imagination takes you to a variety of places and times all in the same story.Her travels to the beautiful southwestern states inspired her more modern historic romance combined with mystery, “100 Years of Brotherly Love”.Her mystery series, The Preston Andrews Mysteries now has 12 published entries, beginning with “Hard Press’d” which now claims over 50,000 downloads and, most recently, the softcover print version of the series in compilation form.Ms. Blair has spent many happy hours in Virginia Beach during off-season, when the winds blow cold and hard and the salty air whips at the weather-protected palms. This is the locale chosen for her Preston Andrews series. Locals and visitors alike find many familiar frames of reference in this series.Her homage to her love for Poirot is via her teeny tiny mystery, “The Board Game Murders”.Her newest series is aimed at a slightly younger and more female audience from that of The Preston Andrews series but begins in the backstory in “Pressing Reunion”.The Samantha Hartley, PI series is lighter and features a very young and not terribly experienced private investigator just beginning her career—with a slight assist from the Director of the FBI.One thing is for certain, she combines her passions into stories interesting to history buffs, travelers, and lovers of romance and mystery.

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      Book preview

      Swinging Between The Poles - Linda Rae Blair

      PREFACE

      My name, as you probably already know, is Linda Rae Blair. You may have already read some of my murder mysteries. At least I hope so.

      I’ve already lived most of the life I’ll get, not that I’m dying—nothing so tragic—I’m just getting closer to my shelf life than I care to admit. I’ve decided that I have a valuable story to tell and now is the time to tell it. Better late than never.

      Like most people of my generation, I’m suddenly more aware of what made me who and what I am. In my case, it’s not always a nice picture, but it is what it is. We cannot change the past, just adjust how we deal with it—or hunt down the facts that may change how we feel about it. This latter course is the one I’ve taken—unintentionally, I will admit.

      My project was to understand someone else—my mother. The result has been my coming face-to-face with myself.

      In my case, I was a very lonely, only child of an older couple. I can hear it now. Aw, poor little girl.

      Don’t waste your pity!

      You’re about to find out that there was, in reality, very little to feel sorry for—although what there was did more to form my character than the niceties with which I grew into a young adult. However, we’ll save that for later.

      I am also the granddaughter of a woman known to be a religious…hum, how shall I put this gently…zealot.

      Grandmother’s method of assuring that her job was well done was to make a belt repeatedly meet with my father’s bottom at night. She wanted to assure that she punished him for any evil of which she was unaware that he may have committed during the day.

      This makes me believe that she may be the direct line that brought manic depression (yes, that bipolar variety of depression you hear about today) into not only my life but also the lives of my children and grandchildren.

      To be honest about it, I’m from a long line of religious zealots—most notably, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins.

      I remember being marched to the principal’s office one Thanksgiving celebration in early elementary school. I had staunchly stuck to my story about descending from this famous Pilgrim pair. The teacher and apparently the principal decided I was a liar and promptly contacted mother.

      Imagine their surprise when my mother informed them I was not a liar—my grandmother’s maiden name was Alden, the line was so direct.

      I’ve spent the majority of my life on a winding, bumpy road looking for that one thing humans need most—love. The need for love—to be loved and to give it—drives humankind to all kinds of behavior.

      When you’re bipolar, the drive is amplified. You become a love-seeking-missile homed in on unsuspecting targets, or you let the targets find you. I was the latter.

      Add mania to the mix of any character flaws and you get an amusement park ride of ups and downs along life’s way. Now that you’ve gotten the mandatory winding, bumpy road and roller coaster references, I’ll move on. Remember them for later.

      Yes, sir, a highly over-amped sex drive, paranoia, a lack of temper control, being excessively exuberant and happy one minute, sad to the point of self-destruction the next—life for us and with us is a blast—if you like living with nitro.

      My story may or may not be unique. For your sake, however, I hope—just this once—I’m truly alone. What may set me apart is that I’ve decided to share my story. If it helps you or someone you love, I’m thankful.

      CHAPTER 1

      Mother’s Story

      Before we get into my own story, in addition to my paternal side, I want you to understand Mother’s background—as much as I know it. Mother had, over the years, related a few details, such as what I’m about to share with you. Not all of it is true. There was much more—some I may never know.

      As She Told It

      Mother always said she became an orphan at a young age. She had few memories. She remembered her mother’s long brown hair—her mother brushing it—probably true.

      She broke her arm and her father set it—also probably true.

      She remembered her older brother, Michael, carrying her on his shoulders to go fishing—no reason to doubt this.

      She remembered her baby sister dying in bed with her—census records indicate her younger sister dropped from the record sometime between censuses.

      Supposedly, the whole family, other than Mother and her older brother, died due to a Scarlet Fever epidemic that was rampant in the early decades of the twentieth century. The loss of the entire family was my understanding—that everyone except she and Michael died. This was blatantly false. Why, I ask myself.

      Then she was put in a foster home where she was used like a maid. She never saw Michael again. Again, I do have reason to believe this.

      For sixty years this entire story was unquestioned.

      Reality

      It turns out that her history was a little bit different from the image I was allowed to live with all those years. I remember, a few months before she died I asked her if she wanted me to do some research to find Michael or his family—after all, if she lived to 92, maybe Michael lived long, too.

      She went into a frenzy and made me promise I would not do any such thing. I promised and, until a few months ago, I left it alone. Well, she’s been gone now for sixteen years. I got onto a poplar genealogy website and got to work. Here’s what I found.

      As late as the 1910 census, at age six, she was still living with her family. It appears that her mother may have died. She, her father, two brothers—one older and one younger—and a younger sister were still living at the time of the 1910 census.

      In 1913, her father remarried. Her grandfather, father, uncle, cousins all lived near each other and were still alive as of 1910. Her father died in 1934.

      I find no excuse worthy of a father fostering his young daughter out to strangers and keeping all the other children. However, I understand that poverty-stricken families sometime disposed of girls in this fashion. Boys could work and were of more value. Obviously, there is more of the story that I may never know.

      The foster family—a childless couple of a doctor and his wife—that raised her was not alone in bringing in a child to do the housework. It was a despicable though common practice at the time.

      By the time she was sixteen, they asked if they could adopt her and she turned them down—apparently with gusto. She was tiny, but could be fierce when her dander was up.

      I do know that she was married very young and very briefly, before she met Dad. I haven’t been able to track that family to get additional information other than to find confirmation

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