Sent away -- again (part I).....

Sometime during my sophomore year of high school, I made a suggestion to my uncle.  Having met with my guidance counselor and counted my credits, I realized that I would have enough credits -- though just barely -- to graduate one year early.  My uncle's response was a quick and firm "no."  Since I had skipped first grade, I was already one of the youngest students in my grade, and graduating early meant that I'd be just two months past my 15th birthday.  He thought that I was simply too young and too immature.

Later during the school year, I made another suggestion -- that I be allowed to finish my last two years at boarding school.  I'd met a girl at "fat camp" the summer before who attended boarding school and said she enjoyed not living at home.  Again, my suggestion was rejected.  During the brief time that my younger brother lived at home (between discharge from the juvenile psychiatric facility and being remanded to the adult psychiatric hospital [at the age of 14]), my uncle and his wife had placed him in a nearby boarding school.  He'd lasted only a couple months before being expelled.  Since boarding school tuition is non-refundable, my thrifty uncle had lost quite a bit of money with that venture.

That didn't stop me from asking again, several more times that year.  However, each time I was told that boarding school was not a possibility.

No graduating early, no boarding school, no getting out of the house anytime soon.

More changes, with a capital "C" .....

I don't know the exact date, but by no later than 1965, my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Granted, this can happen at any age, but this is a disease that's more likely to occur as a woman ages.  According to the National Cancer Institute, "Breast cancer rates are highest in people aged 55-64 years."  My grandmother would have been right in the middle of that age range.

 

No one explained to my eight-year-old self what the ramifications were of that disease.  I was fascinated by her mastectomy scar, and remember that her left arm (the side of her body where the disease was centered) became swollen and painful.  She took time off for surgery and recuperation, and I spent even more time with my great-grandmother.  However, it was around this time that my great-grandmother (who was in her 80's) fell and broke her hip, so she had health issues of her own.  Despite that, she continued to live independently, in her own house, until just a few months before she died in 1973.