We had a Tiger Mom and lived to tell the tale.

My next conversation is with one of my brothers, Dave Taxson. Dave and I grew up like two brown raisins in a saucer of milk, both being Black and adopted into a white family. This was in the south in the late 1970’s, which meant that we were unknowing pioneers of racial integration in our neighborhood and community.

As the years have passed, we have gone in very different directions in our lives, from our political views to our chosen places to live (west coast/east coast). Yet what always brings us back together are the shared experiences and memories that shaped who we are today (and probably still haunt us both). 

Looking back on our childhood, I have come to think of our mother as the original Tiger Mom. She was a powerful force to be reckoned with. We were taught to have the finest manners, we were required to play an instrument and a sport, and we learned how to ballroom dance. Our mother was in the ‘children are seen not heard’ camp, and she had the highest of expectations for each of us.  

The questions

*What’s your name? 

David Morris Taxson 

*Tell us about your current situation/family? 

Dave: I live in Virginia Beach, Virginia with my wife, Kristy, and our dog Iris. I just retired from the Navy after 21.5 years. 

*Would you agree with my assessment of our mother, above? If not, how did you see her differently? 

Dave: She was a force to be reckoned with. She definitely believed that children are to be seen and not heard. We had to go to bed and couldn’t come out of our rooms, especially when she had her Bridge club over. 

Emily: OMG I remember the Bridge club. She would have us set up card tables with covers on them, and put out bowls of snacks. I remember always wishing that I could eat those little bowls of snacks. I also remember the smell of the decks of Bridge cards that we weren’t supposed to touch.

*What did she push you to do, that you wouldn’t have done without her insistence? 

Dave: Piano. I played piano until I was in my teens. I also did show choir, football, lacrosse, and wrestling, but I wanted to do those. My girlfriend was in choir, ahem, so I wanted to be with her. 

Emily: Note to teenage boys – JOIN CHOIR, THERE ARE A LOT OF ELIGIBLE GIRLS AND BOYS IN THERE. HAHA. 

*Do you have happy memories from our childhood house on Pinecastle Rd.? 

Dave: I miss it. I was there for longer than you were because I moved back in after college. Sometimes, I had girls over and they would stay the night in the basement (my bedroom) with me.  Mother would yell downstairs to wake me up and the girls had to hide so she didn’t see them. 

I remember the green shag carpet, and Molly our dog, and the piano room. I remember having a Pogo stick accident where I face planted on the patio. We had the deck path around the backyard… I helped the contractor who built it, his name was PeeWee.

Emily: Weren’t there eventually rats in the backyard? 

Dave: Yes. Our parents had parties in that backyard (before they divorced), and I was the beer guy at the parties. [Emily note: Dave was probably 8 or 9 years old and serving as the beer guy at our parents’ parties.]

Emily: I remember mother serving St John’s Punch and saving the leftover punch in the fridge. It was delicious (and alcoholic). She and her friends also smoked a lot of weed. [Emily note: I was 6 or 7 years old and I most definitely tasted that delicious punch.]

Dave: I remember St. John’s Punch! 

Emily: We need to find the recipe. I remember it had orange juice, pineapple juice, limes, maraschino cherries (grenadine maybe?), rum, and maybe some Sprite?

*Did you have birthday parties? If you did, I can’t remember a single one. 

Dave: Yes, I did. My 14th birthday party was at our house and my friends from school came over. We made a Ouija board. Other years we went duckpin bowling. 

Emily: I remember that I had a birthday party as a kid where we all searched for peanuts (in the shell) in the backyard. Random, no? But probably a GREAT game for the squirrel population, and the rats.

*What else do you remember? I remember being scared of the attic, and I also remember that our house was broken into multiple times. 

Dave: Yes, our house got broken into so many times we ended up getting an ADT alarm system. 

Emily: Aieee! I also remember that we found (you found?) stacks and stacks of Playboy/Penthouse magazines hidden in the wall of the den. I remember thinking it was wild and amazing that they were hidden in the wall. Me being me, I didn’t care about the pictures so much, I just read the Penthouse letters, haha. What happened to those magazines? 

Dave:  <chuckling> I don’t know.

*Are you willing to have more conversations with me about our childhood? 

Dave: Yes, I love talking like this.

Emily: Woo hoo! There is so much to discuss.