"The Three of Us"

Towards the very end of the book it appears that Julia Blackburn has finally began to establish a relatively healthy relationship with her father. They would go out to the pub and talk about books or his poetry and "If things were not going well, then he would thrash about in a net of remorse and despair and irritation, but I didn't feel burdened by the drama of his troubles, simply because he didn't blame me for them" (261). She finally had the weight of feeling accountable for her fathers irresponsible actions. She was not longer the child trying to be the parent to the parent. He had also grown up in a way, finally realizing that the problems of his life were not caused by his daughter. Despite the many past tribulations, they have both moved on.

Near the very end of the book, and of her mothers life, Julia is also able to finally develop a mutual friendship with her mother. Her mother thinks "Funny to have lived close to Julia for the last twenty years, the two of them not more than eight miles apart - ten minutes by car - and yet they were not close at all, until now" (305). Even though they had always physically been close, it took Rosalie (Julia's mother) being on her death bed for them to reconcile and put the past behind them. Though they mostly resolved to forgive and forget, sometimes that is the best option because rehashing old struggles would really have not benefited either mother or daughter. As they talk and discuss some of their pasts, they realize that really they had more in common than they ever imagined. The book concludes with Julia Blackburn finally establishing healthy relations with parents, she herself overcoming the many traumas of her childhood and marrying a man who she loves and who loves her in return.

Blackburn, Julia. The Three of Us: A Family Story. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008.

"The Three of Us"

We see Julia's life start to fall apart when she is seventeen and more of her parents character traits begin to manifest themselves in her. From her mother it seems that she has inherited a terrible taste in men and an unexplainable need for their attention and devotion. She describes her relations with a man named Enrique saying "It was true that he and I had only spent five weeks together, but I felt that he held my life in his hands and I wanted to explain this fact to him, without being demanding or admitting how much he had hurt me" (182). Like her mother, even after he rejects her, she still cannot let go and move on. She lingers to the ideas of what they had and what they could have had if only... She makes a short, teenage relationship into a bigger event, giving herself to someone who was not doing the same for her. It is a very sad example of how, no matter how much she observed what her mother had done wrong, she nevertheless followed in her footsteps.

Possibly even worse than the characteristics she got from her mom, were the habits and feelings that she got similar to her father. Despite seeing the effects of the drugs on her father both physically and mentally she gets involved in marijuana saying "Theo smoked a huge amount of dope and I began smoking too" (183). I was shocked when I read this because I knew from her telling that she hated seeing her father constantly popping pills. She blamed the pills on many of his emotional problems, and yet she was getting involved in the same thing just with a different type of drug. The fact that she is smoking because the guy, Theo, who she was dating at the time also shows her likeness to her mother in her willingness to do anything to be close to him. A bit ironically she has many of the same feelings as her father when high on the drugs or coming down from a high saying "my heart was racing at different speeds and I was sure I was about to die. I decided that if I didn't die, then I would kill myself in the morning" (183). Just like her father she plunges deep into a suicidal despair. The drugs turning her into the very man whose habits she despised from whom I was sure she would learn to stay away from drugs and alcohol. After all she saw first hand their detrimental effects. I was wrong.

Blackburn, Julia. The Three of Us: A Family Story. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008.

"The Three of Us"

As we dive deeper into Julia Blackburn's childhood we begin to learn a bit more about the little things that just helped her get through the day. As her parents become increasingly distant and her father grows in his addictions and violence, she finds friends in her animals. She says "Now, when I came home from school, my fear of what dramas might take place that night was balanced by the anticipation of being in the company of my bushbaby" (106). It is clear that she, as an only child with parents that were for the most part caught up in their own careers and troubles, desperately sought love and affection-something she found in this small animal. As many animal lovers have said, even when no-one else is there, your pet will be waiting for you when you get home, no critisizm or harsh words-just unconditional love. We see the depth of her connection with her bushbaby name Congo when she expresses her feelings after his death. She says "When I was told he was gone I felt as if I had lost my brother, my lover, my closest friends" (106). From this we see just how alone she was and how she longed for a companion. Just someone she could count on and who would care for her unconditionally.
After seeing how much she loves this small animal, the only true companion she has, there is a sad irony about the events that led to her father and mother's final separation. In 1961, after the death of her bushbaby, she finally got what she had always wanted-a dog! However, it turned out the dog was "too nice" and this disturbed her father so he began trying to literally make her dog meaner and unfortunatly-he succeded. This turned out to be the cause of the splitting of their family. The family was sitting down to lunch and Blackburn's father and mother were arguing as usual and when her mother set their lunch of hearts on the table, her father lifted them up and flung them at her mother. Of course, the dog went to grab the hearts as they fell to the floor. Seeing this, her father became furios at the dog and he "picked up a heavy mahogany doorstop, raised the weight above his head and prepared to smash it down on the dog's skull" (115). Luckly Julia was able to push her father over just in time to save the dog. Her father had actually tried to kill their small dog! This was the last straw, a few days later Julia's mother picked her up at school and announced that they would be staying with friends for a while-her and her father were getting a divorce.

Blackburn, Julia. The Three of Us: A Family Story. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008.

"The Three of Us"

As the memoir continues, it is becoming increasingly evident that jealousy is an underlying theme that provides for emotional tension between many of the people in Blackburn's life. Her mother seems to express the most irrational jealousy, she was even jealous of the attention her new born daughter was getting which caused her to resent her daughter for most of her life (44). She was also jealous of her husbands relationship with a man named Francis saying "Francis was her childhood friend and he [her husband] had no right to steal him away" (57). It is very evident that the problem was not her husband hanging out with Francis, but about her own insecurity. She constantly wanted to be the center of attention, instantly despising anyone who took that attention (especially her husbands attention) away from her. At first I couldn't understand this, how could a mother be jealous of her own daughter? But as the memoir continued and I learned more about her childhood, I began to understand.
Growing up, Julia Blackburn's mother had one sister who was two years older. She was always the favorite of the family, everything seemed to start to fall apart after Rosalie (Julia's mother) was born. Julia bluntly said that "Their father loved Boonie and he didn't love Tuggie" (73). Tuggie was Rosalie's nickname and Boonie was her sister Vivienne's nickname. I can't even imagine how a father could actually truly not love his daughter, but evidently he did. He even went to far as to encourage her sister to beat her, often joining in the abuse himself. Rosalie's mother's feelings were not much different saying "She made it clear right from the start that she didn't like her second child, not one bit" (74). Rosalie clearly received no love or affection as a child, being literally hated by bother her parents and being constantly abused, ridiculed and criticized. From this it is easy to see how she ended up with such low self esteem and a need to be in the center of attention. It is also somewhat ironic that it was her sister, who was always the much favored suicide they ended up committing suicide.

Blackburn, Julia. The Three of Us: A Family Story. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008.

"The Three of Us"

Throughout the memoir, Julia Blackburn writes accounts of what she remembers, and of what people around her at the time have told her, she also inserts many of her old diary entries, pictures and occasionally faxes between her and an old friend in which they discuss events of their childhoods. I was a little shocked when she described what she used to write in her diaries as a young girl saying "I write about how I go to school every day, except when I am sick, or tired, or hung-over in which case I stay in bed and write about that instead" (13). She was not very old, only in her early teens so I was very surprised about her so nonchalantly talking about having a hang over, as if it was no big deal. But as I thought about it more, it really doesn't surprise me because of the clear lack of discipline by either of her parents. They were far to occupied with their own lives and careers to feel the need to take responsibility for her.
Neither Blackburn's parents or any of the adults in her life seemed to have any problem with her consuming alcohol. In fact, one morning when she went down into the kitchen after getting ready for school her mothers "partner" who was living with them (she called the men who lived in their spare bedroom lodgers) asked "Brandy?" (17). She denied his offer but nevertheless we start to see that she was treated as if she was much older my all the adults around her. As we read more it is clear that she really did not have a lot of friends and most of her time was spent around adults-namely her parents friends. She was clearly very mature for her age, having to cope with her fathers alcohol and drug addiction, as well as his abuse towards her mom. As the memoir continues, we divulge deeper and deeper into the rather twisted lives of the Blackburn family.

Blackburn, Julia. The Three of Us: A Family Story. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008.

"The Three of Us" by Julia Blackburn

For my third quarter blog am reading a memoir by Julia Blackburn called "The Three of Us: A Family Story." On the very first page of the memoir Blackburn essentially sums up the relationship between her and her father saying "He was disastrous in so many ways, yet I never felt threatened by him. I could be frightened of the madness and the drunken rages, but I never doubted the honesty of his relationship with me and that was what really mattered" (1). From this quote one can tell that despite her fathers drug addictions and alcohol abuse, she still saw him as a father figure and cherished her relationship with him. However, I did find it odd that despite watching him go into insane bouts of rage where he lashed out and even became delirious, she still respected him. I continued to lose respect for her father as I learned about his relationship with her mother. She further describes her fathers relationship with her and her mother saying "My father never hit me; except once when the three of us were sitting down to Sunday lunch at the big round table and he lunged sideways at my mother with his fist, but got me by mistake" (6). She acts as though it is all okay because he didn't mean to hit her, but he was still trying to hit her mother, which in my opinion is just as bad! It is strange to me how she makes such an animal act seem not out of place at the family table, leading me to believe this was not the only time he lashed out against her mother.
Not only did she have a very strange relationship with her father, her mother was not exactly what one would call "normal". In the very beginning of he memoir she summarizes her relationship with her mother saying "Right from the start I was her sister and her confidante and eventually, her sexual rival, as the boundaries between us became increasingly dangerous and unclear" (2). From this sentence, and what we learn later on, her mother was not terribly "maternal." She wanted a companion, someone she could talk to, not a daughter-someone she had to raise and take care of. She even goes so far as to say that her mother begins to see her as a sort of rival in attracting the attention of men. Both of these strange insights into the lives of her parents and their location at the very beginning of the book lead us to believe that they played a key role in her development despite their clearly dysfunctional natures.

Blackburn, Julia. The Three of Us: A Family Story. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008.

"Space" Suffering and Change

After Carol experienced a near death experience, Jesse began to suffer from horrible depression. Her mom was not a mom at all, addicted to Valium, smoking and drinking, she slept and watched T.V. all day, rarely speaking or eating. Jesse says "I disappeared inside my own body. I had the sensation of walking around and looking at my feet and my hands as if they were only remotely connected to anything I would call myself" (268). She had begun to feel that it was easier simply to retreat into herself, ignoring everyone around her. She had lost all felling of self identity, she was just floating through life trying to block out all the pain, suffering and hardships of everyday life. Despite her father hardly being home at all with his work at the junior college, he even began to notice Jesse's behavior and decided to take her to group therapy. However this really didn't help at all because she felt that what she had done was nothing to the stories of the other teens in the group. So, not wanting to look out of place, she "started to lie" (271). She mad up horrible stories, she even seemed to be outdoing the others, real life stories. Despite the lies, she learned from the experience that she never wanted to do the things that the other people told stories about. Or the things that she made up lies about doing.
In one two years everthig seemed to change. Carol went off to norhern florida to go to College, Jesse, after graduating from high school a year early began attending the junior college where her father worked. She maried a boy she met at college at 17, her father and mother got divorced after her fathers health began to fail. Then Jesse said "We got a divorce. My parents, both ill, both living on my fathers's pension in separate rooms in my rented house, decided to remary" (318). Putting it lightly, her life was a mess. Shortly there after, he father died of a heart attack, and her mother then died just over a year later. However, despite how horrible it all seemed, it was not until all those terrible things had happened that Jessa was really able to move on in her life and make something of herself. Jesse said that "After my parents died, that all change" (322). She had been working menial, low wag jobs, but after their death she got a job as a perfessor, began writing books, remaried, and had a daughter. The think to learn from Jesse Le Kercheval's story, was that no matter what stands in your way, there is always a way to move o and make something of yourself.

"Space" Racism

In the early years of her life Jesse Lee Kercheval lived a very sheltered life, she moved to Cocoa florida from Washington D.C. She lived in a small community in Cocoa and looked at the world through very idealistic eyes. Durring the summer when she was fifteen, she went to a three week YMCA camp. There she see's and hears fist hand the racist ideals that were all over at that time. Not only that, looking back on her life she saw instances where she saw blacks being treated differently and didn't understand why. She had "seen a sign posted in a resturant window" that said "Whites Only" (221). She hadn't understood why and had questioned her mother about it. She recalled that her mother explained what it meant, seeming to be embarrised by Jesse's question and clearly in dissagreement with the sign. Yet after Jesse asked her "But if we won't let them come in our resturants, then they might no let us go in theirs" (222). To young Jesse this seemed obvious. She saw that there was no difference what color your skin was, a resturant was a resturant, no matter who owned it. If only more people could have viewed the world the way she did.
At camp, we see that her ideals have changed slightly, nothing is as simple as she thought it was when she was young. She was friends with black kids at camp it made no difference to her what the color of their skin was, in fact one of her two best friends at camp was a black girl named Celia. There were also two black girls at the camp on scolarships, but they kept to themselves and really had no friends beside each other. Celia didn't like them at all, and when Jesse questioned her she said "they just tell everybody in the world that black people are no better than trash, no better than poor ignorant trash" (224). She thought that because they were on scolarship and had secondhand swimsuits they were making her, a fellow black person, look bad. She strongly believed that no one had to be poor, they just had to work hard. She seemed dissapoined in other black people, like they were being lazy. Yet Jesse, doesn't understand she even says "I guess I thought blacks were better than us" (229). She knew that white people discriminated against black people but she didn't realize that it went the other way. That black people, thought the same thoughts about white people or some against other black people. It just goes to show how she looked down on white people for being racist, how she believed that everyone was the same. Skin color doesn't matter.

"Space" Changing Ideas

As I continue to read about the life of Jesse Lee Kercheval I can not help but be saddened by the loss of her innocence and of her idealistic views. We begin to see a very new Jesse from the one that we had originally gotten to know. She goes from being a young rambunctious girl, to a pre-teen who is forced to face things that someone at her age should not have to deal with. This change became extremely apparent to me when she began to talk about the death of neighbor hood pets and the way they coincided with how life ended up turning out for their owners. It was an extremely gloomy observation for such a young girl to even notice, let alone really think about. Speaking about Arrow, the neighbor’s dog, Jesse says "looking back, I can't help feeling that Arrow's death foreshadowed David's sisters, the first tragedy preparing the way for the next" (157). First the Mizes dog died, he was running full tilt and ran directly into a pole and immediately died. Then only a few years later, the Mizes daughter was involved in a one-man car crash and died instantly. Even now I'm not sure I would have even considered this connection, this intricate weaving of fate. Yet at barely twelve years old, Jesse stated it as simply a harsh fact about life. Then, after her two dogs got in a horrible fight, sending one to the emergency room, Jesse talks about the deeper implications of her parent’s decisions give up one of the dogs. To her family the dogs were part of the family, she wondered what hidden meaning this event could have saying "If Gretel was my mother's four-legged daughter, what did it mean that she was willing to give her away in the name of harmony and practicality?" (159). Jesse considered the dog, Gretel to be the dog version of her, so she actually wondered if, because her parents were willing to give gretel away, if they would also do the same with her. If she just became too much to handle they could just hand her away because it was the easiest thing to do. This really opened my mind to how much the family and even neighborhood you grow up in affects essentially how you’re mind works and what you believe.
Not only did her beliefs and feeling about her family change, her past idealistic views began to change to accept what was, rather than trying to change it. When she was young she dreamed of being an astronaut and saw no reason why she could not accomplish this, after all she was just as capable as any boy was. However, her enthusiasm for the subject decreases and she begins to accept the sexist views of society saying "A year ago, it had seemed impossibly unfair that women couldn't be astronauts, real astronauts. Now I was only bummed that it meant I couldn't blast off in the Maltezo's Airstream and spend ten days nearly alone in "space" with Paul" (166). He focus begins to shift from her hopes and aspirations of the future to what is going on right at the moment. She begins to be interested in boys and not so much about changing society for the better. This seemed ironic to me, because I would think that as one grows up and become more educated they would seek to further themselves and the world. Yet it seems in Jesse's case anyways that as one grows up, they lose their passion, and optimism that they can do anything about it. Her family life continues to collapse and she really starts to make it apparent. She has accepted it, though she doesn't like what has happened she feels powerless to change it. When talking about the prospect of going home after swim practice she says "I hated the idea of being in the house with only Bertha, Lucky, and my drugged mother" (177). In the past we saw her overlooking her mother’s problems, but here really for the first time we see her acknowledge them. She no longer insists on looking at the good side of everything and ignoring the bad. She sees what is there and accepts it, feeling small and hopeless; there is nothing she can do so why bother. It is so sad that such a young girl so full of ideas, optimism, and spunk, is growing up to just embrace the way things are, wither she likes them or not.