HITCH YOUR DAUGHTER TO A STAR

My mother once told me - in a candid moment- that she never wanted to be a "stage mother". I was 12 or 13 I think when she made that comment, somewhat defensively, out of nowhere. As if to measure my response. I had certainly not brought it up but she said someone had accused her of wanting to put me on stage -- I still can't think of an example other than the time she made me take ballet and I failed colossal due to missing all the classes...

Whatever the reason I was not l comfortable performing in public, although I had my moments. I didn't seek attention but neither did my mother fit the portrait of a pushy mom managing her daughter's career. I cant remember a single instance of her pushing me into anything I didnt want to do or be.

I was a weird little girl

But the 1950s and 60s were happy, innocent days when we could dream in Disney colors- pink and turquoise. But behind the tv screen lurked much darker scenes

My mother also once told me (with a puzzled look as if she had been thinking the question over and coming up with a blank): "your father and I never left you alone with baby sitters. We always stayed home after you were born and never went out when you were little."

This was one of my rare glimpses into her thoughts which she mostly kept to herself. "Still waters run deep" describes her well.

She had obviously been wondering what went wrong in their parenting of us twins - and babysitters were suspect except she never engaged one.

No one had heard of organized child abuse back in the 1950s and 60s.

Maybe my parents never went out after we were born- I could believe that - but they lost track of me for two weeks in 1955 when I went to the hospital at age 3, putting me into the hands of doctors who nearly killed me with electroshock and loaded me onto planes to unknown destinations...

But my mother couldn't even imagine something so heinous as a government-sponsored military mind control program that systemically traumatized little children whom it separated from their parents under pretexts that borrowed a lot from Disney movies.

Dissociation is how people cope with shock and trauma - they compartmentalize their experiences.

My mother's motto was "Remember the good times, and forget the bad."

She had had her share of bad in the course of a lifetime in which she gave birth for the first time to twin children at 37. By which time she was well trained at forgetting.

As a mother she was in many ways ideal: wise, supportive, sympathetic, gentle rather than coercive or angry. She bore my dad's temper with amazing patience yet she wasnt exactly a doormat either. She stood her ground in their arguments.

Only now do I realize she had plans and projects that she kept hidden, slowly working towards her goals with diplomacy and much more skill than I gave her credit for.

Rarely did she open up to me, or let her anxieties surface. She was discreet. She was calm and thoughtful. But she hid a lot behind that genteel exterior. What did she do all day while we were at school? I never asked and it rarely occurred to me to wonder. But I suspect she planned our lives - more than she let on. Without ever letting on that there was an elaborate plan which went into operation in the fall of 1962.

It appears she allowed me to be in a relationship and step by step she orchestrated what she thought was an advantageous marriage-- without telling me what was going on. Probably assuming I would figure it out in good time.

She must have approved of my trip to London in 1963 because otherwise it could not have happened. I could not have disappeared for a weekend at age 12 without major consequences but instead it all went so smoothly I was there and back and didn't remember

and then she supported the coverup afterwards -

She couldn't have done this alone. She had to have had professional help from the Air Force mind doctors on how to manage this extraordinary feat: getting me onto a plane and over to England to meet up with Mick for this big event. In fact it sounds like something his mother would have proposed and helped to pull off. It had all the earmarks of a symbolic meeting designed to seal our future together,.by putting me at the scene in case he had forgotten me. And my mother would have gone along with the idea in the hope of securing my position. And the Air Force provided the plane and pickup at the airport.

And all this behind my dad's back.

Of course he may have been in on it, persuaded to agree. Or perhaps he was so scrambled and passive, it went right over his head.

If it worked out, and I came home thrilled and happy, so much the better. And the doctors at McGill were always ready to erase the memory of an experiment once it failed.

And either my mom was innately deceptive or she was even more mind controlled and prone to memory blanks and critical lapses than I was, but one thing I see now: she dreamed big. She wanted me to "soar". She just forgot to let me in on the deal that had been made for me in childhood-- probably because there was no way out of it. Those psychiatrists had paid a lot of money for my services.

She must have thought ... many things... they probably led her to believe they were teaching me great things in their laboratory where the other children lived

Photographic memory

Mental telepathy

Psychokinesis

Astral projection

The first record I ever owned was Catch a Falling Star by Perry Como

Flip side: Magic Moments (filled with love)

Released December 3, 1957

RecordedOctober 9, 1957

I was 6 and in Grade One when I asked for it as a present. And that must have pleased them: to see me playing it over and over on my little turntable.

And I still remember those magic moments when I felt I was swimming in starlight and love.