CHILDHOOD

Hieu: How old were you when you left the town?

Brinton:  I was seventeen. And I…..How was that!  That was …..You know I read a book when I was a child, I really read a lot of books when I was kids.  But I read this book when n I was…I don’t know…may be 11, 13….it called ( the …Salem)….and it ‘s very interesting because this new book ‘s written by a …  a woman who lived in Salem – Massachusetts . But when I read this book……I think I was in either in Junior High School or in …..They had quiet an impact on me….because it’s all about independence woman and women who engage the world of our university and …a child growing up, umm... On the one hand I was raised in a fairly conventional family, where the expectation that I would get married and have children.  On the other hand that fitted my generation, on the other hand, I when to a Catholic school and I was raised by a nun, who is their own way of independent women.  And so I had that another image.  The book gave me the third image of the…..you can get married and have children or you can be a nun, or you can be whatever you want…..an independent woman.  I did not know what it was, but it was sort of the third option. 

I was of nine children and I was close to the older in the family.  I was the first daughter.  I have an older brother.  And he’s barely a year older than me.  So I had a lot of responsibility…

Hieu:  To your brothers and sitters.

Brinton:  Right! I had to taking care of …..

Hieu:  You must be very strong and….

Briton:  Very strong and very busy.  A lot of kids and….so ….

Hieu: How was that effect you school?

Brinton:  School for me for me….I liked school.  And it kind of a break from…ummm…taking care of younger siblings.

Hieu:  Did your parent support you, I mean your education…../

Brinton: You mean when I was growing up?

Hieu: Yes!

Briton:  Absolutely.  We all went to school. Umm…my parents sent us all to Catholic schools, and …you know……did they expect us to go to colleges?

Hieu: yeah!  That‘s my point.  Did they want to stop and get married and..

Brinton: um..no….. I grow up in an interesting ……my parents never said ….you know …..”I never expect you to get married and ……they never said anything like that  

That was kind of all around me.  And my mother would not go to college but my father went to college.  And my parents would not necessary interested academic um …and in fact point to the construal when I was growing up, um they never rewarded us for doing well in school but they also never punished my siblings for doing poorly in school. 

Hieu: Many children, may be?

Brinton:  Also my mother knew how to lay all of us.  In a group…..I grew up in a very strong sense of group-ness.  Collectivity.

Hieu:  I had that experience, too.  I had eleven brothers.

Brinton:  Really?  Are you the only girl?

Hieu: Three girls and I am in the middle of nine boys.

Brinton:  uh, huh. …….(laugh..:)  there you go!......and my mother had lot of bothers and sisters and they all live in (war…) and a lot of growing up was cousins and spending a lot of time in an extended family.  So that was a strong ….of extended family.  So if anything would of much less of individuality or individual sort of separating our self of large group.  And schools kind of provide me opportunities to distinguish my self from this large family.  Um I did well in school.  I liked school ….I…and I have to say.  At least from the eight grade…that I wanted to go to college.  I didn’t necessary know where I wanted to go but I wanted to go way to college. Um..and my parents never said NO….I don’t think we talked about it a lot. But they never said No, you can’t do that.  Ad I got into high school.  They said you can go wherever you can get in.  you know you can go to college, wherever you can go to college ….was only as I began to get into the process to apply to college…..I began to have opinion where I want to go.

Hieu: A lot of teenagers, most of the time think about fun, activities and boys…..what made you have a clear direction to what you want? And how it made you different with other girls during that time?

Brinton: Um….One was I think I was pretty dull.

(Big laugh!!!)

I mean….I think I was  umm….I really wasn’t …um……you know it’s very funny when you look back….I wasn’t that interested in boys.  I was very interested in school.  I played sports.  I was on a volley team, a basket ball team and a soccer team.  Well…we didn’t have soccer team, base ball team and soft ball team.  I did a lot of reticular, I volunteer in teaching religion in children hospital.  I did baskets for the poor, I did a lot of …kind of the volunteers church. in high school.

Hieu:  In high school

Brinton: In high school, my school promoted that and I was very interested in that. Um…and I spent a lot of time ……one thing that  had  to do with my class back ground….....  My mother hired a women to help take care of us.  An African American, native American women, part of African American and part of native American.  Her name is Julia.  And she came into my life when I was about two or three years old.  And she worked for my family until my youngest bother, who was twenty one year younger than my oldest brother, was in high school. So she was with our family for very many many years.  And she… was very a dynamic, um….woman who had gone to work for the first time when she was thirteen years old.  She’ not formerly educated, in term of having gone to school, but she‘s very educated in term of streets. And I.…I …..in some ways, each of us in my family had a very positive with ……  She died of cancer a number of  years ago, but it’ a strong relationship with her.  I think I  had a particular strong relationship with her because in many ways, she was there to help take care of the children, and that‘s some of I had to do so….as an older child.

Hieu: I see. 

Brinton:  We kind of worked together. But I learned a lot about …um….black in New Orleans, about her in life; about some of the experiences she had discriminations.  Through her I met a guy who came on Saturday, once a month to clean windows and do yard work and family who a minister and I got to understand something about the black church.  Um…and so I was exposed to ……even though I lived in a community that was very much White.  My school was not integrated when I was growing up.  I am old enough to remember sign and stores that say “water fountain whites, and water fountain color…” it means …..that was kind of despairing, but I remember these things as a child.  And I  lived through in some ways ..um…integrate school and civil right movements while I was in school as a child.  And all of these things …um (Pause)…you know….it’s interesting… I was a very serious child.  May be that ‘s better saying I ……

Hieu: Well, I think also…..you kind of ……seem to observe things around you…..

Brinton:  Right! Right. 

Hieu: Like You observe the Nany…….Not so many people around care about it….and

Brinton :  Right…right……

Hieu: you observed that, and through her, you knew the guy cleaning the window and you learned from them.

Brinton: Right…and….so I was serious…..( J)…..I think that might be a nice way to say that I am dull…because  I don’t ……..People who know me, suppose to call me I was an doll……..The second thing that …um……you know I think that……that  I was very….(PAUSE)…. move by…  a ……….When I was a child, when I was about six years old.  I was actually  sick.  I had (polio) and I was hospitalized and that had a very strong impact on me, but it ‘s not…again, it another experience that I have (PHONE RANG )…..in the childhood I had to go through.  I didn’t really understand until I was a lot older.  Um…..because I was in the hospital with a lot of kids with a very serious physically ill.  Some of them died, who I had gotten to know while I was in the hospital that had a B…i…G (emphasize) impact on me.  But it was not something …like …..I didn’t grow up in family where people talk too much about what was going on.  And the way I coped with that experience in large because I was in a large family.  And even thought the doctors predicted that I would not walk.  I recovered in ways that was not predicted. And so I behaved that I never been sick.  And it was not until I was a lot older, that I look back,…………..I came to understand the experience having had a big impact on my life. And large part also I think because in my family, one of my sister once told me that in our family nobody could get sick because I was a sick child.  And so I think……..I realized that my sibling really had a lot of present about that, and so it was something you want to hold on to it or identity marker or something you want to forget.  So I did.  I became very athletic. I got very involved….I was very able …..to…much more able than anybody would have predicted.  But I think that experiences kind of got me more interested in suffering, um…illness, …..um…how people cope with things, …and also very preoccupied around death.  And around the meaning of death. And around why children died.  And I think that kind of preoccupation and concerns kept me interested in religion, to the one hand look in for the explanation like how can God who are…… …who’s a good god allow children to die, who done nothing wrong. And  ..um on the other hand…uh…may me more serious than I might have of otherwise have been. 

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