Momma Jacquie Paid For Food Prep

She had a lot of names: Her birth name was Jacqueline Thompson, but she wanted a middle name and gave herself one; Jean. Her married name was Norris. Her daughters called her Mother. Most of you knew her as Jackie, unless you were kin and then it was Aunt Jack, Momma Jack or, as I called her, Momma Jacquie. NO ONE called her Grandma, even though she had 8 grandchildren and I don’t even know how many great grandchildren.

She insisted that I never call her Grandma and explained that it was because she was too young to be my grandmother. Being a child, I took that literally and wondered who my grandmother was, in this huge family of ours, if it wasn’t possible for her to be old enough. There was the suspicious issue of my cousin Scott being born the same day as me. In my young, conspiracy theory laden head, I thought maybe we were twins, separated at birth and that Scott’s mom, Mary, who was Momma Jacquie’s sister, was my real mom and THAT’s why Momma Jacquie wasn’t old enough to be my grandmother.

I’d stare long and hard at Scott and his parents, but didn’t see me in them. I looked like my Dad and sounded like my Mom, so I grew up unsure of how the family tree really was rooted. That uncertainty was compounded by the fact that I grew up with two sets of parents. My own, Barbara and Vernon Stairs, and the people, who weren’t old enough to be my grandparents, who had me call them BigDaddy and Momma Jacquie.

I’d heard stories about Momma Jacquie growing up in Arkansas,picking cotton, and how she’d married at the age of 16 to escape the hard life of being the eldest girl of 8 children who were all raised during the great depression. But by the time she was 18 she had two daughters of her own, Carole (my aunt) and Bar-Jean (my mother.)

My mother was born first, in 1941, and named after most of her aunts. Knowing the way this family loves to name their daughters after all their sisters, it was a good thing thatMomma Jacquie’s youngest sister wasn’t even born until after the birth of my mother, or else she would have ended up with a name like: Mary Barbara Jean Trena Norris Stairs.

My Aunt Carole was born in 1942, just days before the death of a film star comedienne that must have captivated Momma Jacquie’s imagination, because she was named after Carole Lombard, complete with the E at the end of her name, to be sure that she was not just any Carol, but rather named for the famous actress. For those who aren’t old enough to remember, Carole Lombard was married to Clark Gable and they were the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie of their era.

Momma Jacquie’s favorite actress was the comedienne, Lucille Ball, who rose to stardom in 1951 in the show with her husband, Desi Arnaz, in I Love Lucy. What some of you may not remember, but I’m sure Momma Jacquie did, was that Lucille Ball was the first woman to run a major television studio. It was known for producing StarTrek and Mission Impossible. Thankfully that didn’t happen until a year after my birth or she may have insisted that my parents name me Lucy.

My mother tells me that despite the financial difficulties that must have been inherent in her family they had one of the first television sets. As I think back about the timing, Momma Jacquie went straight from the depression era to being married with 2 children during World War II. Big Daddy had been building orange crates for just pennies in California, and then a soldier and then a police officer while Momma Jacquie was doing her part for the war effort by working at Delco Remy which switched from manufacturing General Motors automobiles to military vehicles during the war. She had done some modeling and even had a nose job done because she wanted to look like the perfect, all American girl, and thought her Indian nose might stereotype her.

I can imagine that during such hard and trying times she must have turned on that TV and felt the sort of escape that only Hollywood could provide; a world where female comediennes were beautiful, happy and able to find the funny side of all of life’s trials. It was a world of make believe and I think it inspired Momma Jacquie to a lot of the behaviors that we observed in her.

I’m sure she fantasized about how different her life could have been if she had been rich, famous or of royal lineage. What she never knew, because I didn’t know it until last week thanks to Ancestry.com, was that she had married royalty. Big Daddy, who you knew as Floyd Norris, had roots that went back to William I theLion, King of Scotland in the 1200’s. Although she loved Big Daddy, I think she would have appreciated him more if his family had passed down that information, but they were a humble lot.

Momma Jacquie loved female comediennes, but was never funny. Maybe she tried her hand at it early on, but by the time I came along, she had figured out that she was no comic. She only finished the 6th grade, she had no secretarial skills and her handwriting was illegible. In the 1960’s my parents lived in Thonotosassa and Big Daddy and Momma Jacquie lived in Tampa. Both of my parents worked, so they would drive into Tampa before work, drop me off for the day to be with Momma Jacquie, and then pick me up at night and drive back to Thonotosassa.

I thought Momma Jacquie and Big Daddy were rich! Momma Jacquie didn’t have to work so I thought that being a car salesman must be a very lucrative business. He had trophies for his efforts and they were living the lifestyle of the rich and famous to my mind. They always had a new car, the furniture was white, with satin pillows, gold gilded mirrors and everything was off limits, due to it all being a collection of untouchable treasures. There was always a maid, but I thought that maybe she was just part of the décor because Momma Jacquie was always cleaning something and insisting that it would be great fun for me to clean stuff too.

They had a pool. It was just one of those little plastic kiddie pools, but I can remember lounging in that pool, the sunlight warm on my face, a blue jay hopping around in the branches above and watching Momma Jacquie doing jumping jacks in front of theTV with Jack LaLanne. I was glad that I was already wet and she wouldn’t want me slinging water all over the house to join her in his TV exercise workout.

Momma Jacquie used to take care of my cousin Matt too, while Aunt Carole worked. She always treated me like I was her favorite grandchild, but I figured it was because I was the only girl, and the only one she could model into the life that she thought she had missed…or maybe because when Matt was just a toddler he managed to drive her car into the side of the house. He not only wrecked the car, but wrecked any chance of boys being allowed to play in the house.

I lived two simultaneous lives. During the week I lived with Momma Jacquie and was groomed to fulfill her ambition of being a famous movie star. I was taught to read, and sing but dancing was forbidden, and was reminded constantly not to slouch, to stand up straight and to address adults as if I were one. I was coached in how to hold my pinkie out when sipping from a cup, keep direct eye contact when speaking, to shake a person’s hand firmly and spent much of my time walking with books balanced on my head. Shoes were not allowed in the house, so I became quite stealthy, as well as seeming to float across the room. Most importantly though, I was instructed not to talk to people and animals “who weren’t there” because people would think I was crazy.

On the weekends I lived with my parents in Thonotosassa, which in the 60’s may as well have been the wild, wild west. My cousin Scott and I climbed trees, hiked for miles, rode bikes, roller skated in the streets, chased lizards and snakes and would come home so filthy that his mom, Mary, who also kept an immaculate house, with baby blue shag carpet, wouldn’t even let us come inside. My house was made for living though, so we could go there. I had a dog, a cat and a bird and that bird would just spit seeds everywhere.

Living that double standard was confusing. I remember my mother just being mortified one day to see me cleaning out the birdcage with a hose. Not wanting to make a mess of my clothes, which would have been a sin at Momma Jacquie’s I had decided to wash the cage out, naked, in the front yard. Thinking back on this, half a century later, I wonder how confusing it must have been for my mother, wondering what on earth would possess me to be concerned about a little dirt.

When I started school Momma Jacquie no longer had me to groom every day, for that film career she was determined that I have, and had to find a way to fill her days. She discovered Amway and quickly rose through the ranks because she was a natural born sales person. There are two kinds of successful sales people; those that are so nice you just want to buy from them and those that won’t take no for an answer. Big Daddy was the first kind. Momma Jacquie was the second type. She showed me a gaudy, gold gilded glass coffee table that she didn’t want any more one day and said, “Do you like it?” I didn’t want to be rude, so I said “yes.” She responded by saying,“Good. That will be $150.” I would never have paid $150 for a coffee table, but I paid her, because I wouldn’t dare tell her, “no.” I didn’t even have a couch because I worked all the time and didn’t have time to be sitting around.

Momma Jacquie and Big Daddy built their Amway business to Ruby level and purchased a building on N. Florida Avenue to stock their supplies and hold their meetings to recruit and train. By the time I was 7 my family had moved to Panama City and then to West Virginia, so Momma Jacquie threw herself entirely into building an empire via Amway.

She visited us in West Virginia when I was about 8 and chided me for being fat. I remember the day and the photo that was taken that day, of my brother on a trike and me posing, as the loving sister, for the photo, behind him. I wasn’t fat, but it was the 60’s and women were now all supposed to look like the supermodel, Twiggy who was 5 foot 6 and weighed only 112 lbs. Momma Jacquie was doing her part to try and meet that ridiculous standard and was insistent that I do so too.

Momma Jacquie also got it in her head that my grey cat was not a fitting pet for someone who would someday be a star and that I should get a poodle. I was never a “dog” person and didn’t want a poodle. I got a cat breed book out and tried to convince her that Smokey was surely either a purebred Korat or a Russian Blue, due to her solid grey coat, but she wasn’t buying it. Smokey didn’t have a pedigree and that just wouldn’t do. We finally compromised with a purebred Siamese cat.

The part of this compromise that I did not fully comprehend was that my beloved Smokey would be dumped at the county shelter. Momma Jacquie assured me that someone else would adopt Smokey and she would be fine. This was a low point in our relationship, but a turning point as well. I believe that every choice we make happens for a reason, and ultimately was meant to be.

It was a while before I would learn about what happens to cats who are abandoned. When I could do something about it I did, largely because of the guilt I felt for Smokey.

Despite never being an animal person, when it came time for my daughter to go to college, Momma Jacquie offered to pay her tuition. Jamie had been working with me, taking care of the big cats since she was 12, and she said that she’d rather the money go to a Food Prep building. I’m sure it was hard for Momma Jacquie to give up on the thought of Jamie getting a college education, like she had provided for others in her latter life, but she put Jamie’s desires ahead of her own and funded the building that feeds our 100 lions, tigers and other wild cats. A plaque on that building commemorates her gift.

My family moved back to Tampa when I was 11 in 1972 and my dual family role resumed. After school my father would pick Chuck and I up and drive us to Momma Jacquie and Big Daddy’s storefront business on N. Florida Av. I liked to paint, write poetry, make jewelry and read. While other kids were reading Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, Momma Jacquie kept me stocked with books like, Psycho Cybernetics, Think and Grow Rich, and How to Win Friends and Influence People. I thought everybody read that stuff.

The storefront had 3 little stores in front and then the huge warehouse area for the Amway. I couldn’t make enough jewelry to stock one of the little stores, so Big Daddy gave me catalogs for glassware and I shopped for carnival glass, crystal and other fine glassware to stock the shop. After school, I manned the store. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, so I got a lot of reading done, and all of it would help shape my future.

During her Amway meetings, Momma Jacquie would trot me up onstage to show them how lovely my hair was thanks to Amway’s LOC, dish detergent. She’d ask me to talk about how great the products were and sometimes to sing. I don’t think she needed my help selling. Who would tell her “no?” I think she was always hoping that I’d be“discovered” by someone in the crowd.

I’m sure I was a disappointment to her when I got married at 17, had a baby at 19 and got too fat to model. Like her, I obsessed over my weight, only ate dietetic sweets and colas and exercised a ridiculous amount of hours in a day, but I didn’t look likeTwiggy. I was hungry all the time, so I chain smoked, secretly, as I knew my family would worry if they knew.

By the time I was 30, in 1991, I had built up a real estate business that still supports me today. I owe that success to Momma Jacquie‘s inspiration to dream big and my mother’s constant encouragement that I could do whatever I set my mind to do. Despite having plenty of money, I shopped at yard sales and just love getting a deal.

One of those turning points came right about that time. I’d taken to using those long cigarette holders, like you’d see in the 1950’s movies, because the nicotine was turning my knuckles orange, and I didn’t want anyone to know I smoked. I’d gone to a yard sale and bought a brand new, white, fuzzy bath robe, that still had the tags on it for fifty cents. I’d bleached my hair that night, but the old house that I’d recently bought out of foreclosure had a bad well, and was sputtering rusty water all over my hair as I tried to wash out the bleach. Exhausted, I went to bed with wet hair and figured I’d assess the damage the next day.

The next morning I slipped on the new, floor length, white faux fur robe and stumbled to the bathroom. I was aghast to see that my hair was bright red from the rusty water that had colored the bleached out shafts. Needing my morning dose of nicotine, I lit a cigarette, fastened it into the long holder and walked out on the balcony that overlooked my back yard. I was standing there, watching the birds and squirrels, wondering how I was going to fix this mess I’d made of my hair when the phone rang.

I could count on one hand the number of times Momma Jacquie ever called me. Everyone always said I was her favorite, but we just weren’t demonstrative that way. No hugging, kissing or calling for no good reason. When I answered the phone it was Momma Jacquie and she said, “I just woke up from the most realistic dream and I just had to tell you…”

“You were a movie star, with flaming red hair, and you were wearing a long, white fur coat, and smoking one of those long cigarettes, like they did on the silver screen, and you were holding court with all your fans from a balcony above them. It seemed so real. Isn’t that just the oddest thing?”

This was before portable phones, so I spun around to see how she could possibly be watching me to make this prank call. I quickly realized that she hadn’t seen me in a physical sense, but in her dream had seen me in stunning detail.

This was a turning point because it reminded me of First Corinthians 13: 12 “For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known.” This was one of those rips in the fabric of what we think we know, that illuminates who and what we really are. The woman who had tried to convince me that the invisible people and animals that I could see and talk with weren’t really there had just revealed that you don’t have to believe something is possible to experience it.

I fessed up to every part of her vision (except the cigarette) but I don’t know if she believed me. I hadn’t begun learning about remote vision, lucid dreaming or other paranormal activities yet, so I couldn’t explain how she could have seen me in such amazing detail from miles away. I gave up smoking that year. That moment did open up my mind to learning more about how the universe works. The more I learn, the more amazed I am at our capacity and our Creator.

Those who have gone on before us may be obscured from our vision, like “in a mirror darkly,” but I think that is largely due to our self-limiting beliefs. If there is anything I am sure of, it is that we are eternal; we are all connected, because we are all ONE.