Eye on the Sparrow: A Memoir

By D. A. Gregory

About the Book
D. A. Gregory was born and raised in Queens Village on Long Island, N.Y. She and her husband of 54 years lived in Europe, Florida and Kentucky. After raising two children and working as a church and legal secretary, a preschool teacher and children's Sunday School leader, she retired and had time for her artistic painting and love of writing. Of her three children's books, the family favorite is on Amazon entitled, "Lillian Rose Wants a Turtle," based on her granddaughter's childhood wish. This, her first biography, is a poignant Memoir vividly recalling the pain and lifelong scars of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of a tyrannical father. The author's struggle with parental rejection and her doubts of self-worth and insecurity send her on a purposeful search for identity and truth. At times, love come through her mother and other relatives like beams of bright light dispelling the darkness. In young adulthood, a perceptive "messenger" was sent who saw her need and led her on a faith journey to her loving, caring Heavenly Father. This is a riveting story of overcoming and sensing God's watchful eye on His child that reshaped her destiny and turned years of dysfunction into a life worth living. So, step back into the 1950's as the author weaves the culture of that day's innocence, tragedy and tradition with childhood imagination and humorous relief. Truly, her life is a testimony to God's immeasurable saving grace, love and protection, asserting, "His Eye is on the Sparrow."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Jul 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886833737

Book preview

Chapter One

A Time to Be Born"

On an uncomfortably sticky August afternoon in the summer of 1949, my mother and my maternal grandmother were preparing supper for my father, John, and Bill, my grandfather. My grandmother, Emma and her daughter, Doris, could hardly wait until the men arrived home from work.  When John and Bill came in, there was small talk and a dinner of their favorites on the table.  After eating, Emma poured the coffee and took her seat giving Doris a nod.  Bubbling over, my mother asked for everyone’s attention. I have something special to say, then, turning to look at John intently, she continued, We’re expecting a baby in March!  

Bill jumped up from his chair!  Looking at my grandmother he exclaimed, Wonderful Em, we’re going to be grandparents!  He went to hug his daughter and offer a handshake to his son-in-law, but John spoke four words that stopped him in his tracks and scorched the room. GET RID OF IT!  Everyone froze as John stared at Doris and repeated himself, GET RID OF IT!  My grandfather’s joy turned to unbridled anger as his only daughter, Doris, broke down sobbing.  Bill grabbed John by the collar and angrily lifted him out of the chair.  

Curse words and a threatening fist flew!  Emma screamed, Oh, Bill! but there was no stopping my grandfather!  He had John in a fierce grip, leading him to the front door and throwing him out.  It was a horrible end to the celebratory dinner Emma and Doris had planned.  Bill was still beside himself as Em tried comforting their brokenhearted daughter. I told you not to marry that son of a bitch, sweetheart, Bill said.  He, indeed, had been opposed to their union.  But Doris had her father’s genes and his stubborn willfulness.  She had fallen in love with John and felt, in time, she could smooth his rough edges.

I learned of this disastrous dinner episode as a young adult and could not even imagine my mother and father getting through that night and her pregnancy.  Nevertheless, on the twenty-second day of March in 1950, I was born to the delight of my mother who had prayed for a baby girl.  While my doting grandparents used words like perfect, beautiful and little sweetheart, John’s adjectives were very Aryan, healthy, strong and rosy-cheeked.  But the story of my birth that my mother reflects on still today is the one I most recall and treasure.

I was still on the delivery table when the doctor handed you to me and said, ‘You have a beautiful daughter!’  Then he kissed me on my forehead and said, ‘You’re going to be a great mom.’   Holding you I said, This is the best gift I will ever have in my life!’"

Days after my arrival, there was much discussion about my name. (Good lord, John suggested Ramona after a popular song!)  Mom had wanted Linda Leigh after her best girlfriend and maid of honor, Leigh.  But there was already a baby girl in John’s family with one of those names.  John could only agree then to name me after my mother, Doris.  So, I am Doris Ann, and my family would call me by both names to distinguish between us.

My earliest memory is being laid into a baby carriage and tucked in with a scratchy blue wool blanket, looking up at my mother and my grandmother smiling down at me.  By summer, I was in a stroller being pushed proudly down the boardwalk at Jones Beach.  And, again, the next summer, walking on the boardwalk in a sweet yellow sundress holding my grandfather’s hand.  I still have lovely black and white photos of those childhood summers on Long Island.  After I was born and Bill became a grandfather, he began filling the obvious void John was leaving as a father.  Gramps thought his little fair, blonde granddaughter hung the moon!

But the animosity between Bill and John was set in stone from the day John reacted to Mom’s announcement at the dinner table.  Their dislike for one another was not obvious to me in childhood as Gramps made an all-out effort with John for the family’s sake.  But John made little attempt at civility and often retreated to the basement to avoid being social with family and Mom’s friends—especially those not German.  Years later, I’d feel Mom’s embarrassment over his absence.  She’d lure him back upstairs by serving coffee and cake.  John was an ogre and an introvert, and Mom was a social butterfly.  Yes, opposites do attract—but extreme opposites, how long?

Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward.

Psalm 127:3

For you formed my inward parts; you wove me in my mother’s womb.  I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well.  Psalm 139: 13-14

Chapter Two

I Am a Defect"

In my earliest years until age 5, I had been in and out of hospitals suffering from chronic kidney infections.  I still remember drinking the awful barium milkshakes.  The technician would ask me, Chocolate or vanilla? But both tasted like chalk and I’d gag as I obediently drank the horrid stuff.  Radiology in the 1950s was not a perfect science, so the mystery of my relentless infections went unsolved.

From my bedroom at night I could hear every word Dad and Mom spoke over coffee and cigarettes at the kitchen table.  There were doctors’ bills to pay that were burdening them.  I heard my father accuse my mother of giving him a defective child.  I didn’t know what that word meant, but the way Dad said it made me feel broken.  A heated, defensive response from Mom led to another of their fierce arguments that filled me with fear.  Shivering and pulling the covers up over my head, I wanted their fighting to stop.  As young as I was, I thought the cause of their constant bickering was my fault.  Deep down, I wanted to just disappear so they would be happy.

My mysterious defect culminated on Christmas Eve, 1955.  Santa was on his way with toys, but I didn’t care.  Nothing the family could say or do distracted me from the blinding pain in my abdomen.  Lying on the sofa with my head cradled in Mom’s arms, I saw watery Christmas tree lights through my tears.  Mom, my grandparents and even my father tried to comfort me, but the reality was that I was seriously ill.  Dad carried me to my room and laid me in bed as I cried and groaned with belly pain.  With a fever rising, Mom called for a doctor to come immediately to the house.  Hearing my symptoms over the phone, the pediatrician sent a surgeon.  He came to our door, seemingly disgruntled at being summoned on Christmas Eve, demanding a $25 fee before coming inside.  With my grandparents help, he was promptly paid.

Mom led him back to my room.  I remember the pain as he examined my distended abdomen.  He spoke somber words that set my parents into motion.  Dad drove our 1955 Ford around front and ran back into the house.  Mom got into the car with a blanket to wrap me in while Dad lifted me from my bed and hurriedly placed me on her lap.  Driving very fast, I saw traffic lights speed by looking up through the windshield at a dark night sky.  It was around midnight when we sped up to the emergency entrance of the hospital.  I was put in an examining room alone with a nasty old nurse.  Groaning in pain, she pricked my finger for a blood test while scolding me and telling me to stop crying.  You’re just a faker, aren’t you? she said with a scowl.  I was too sick and too cowed to answer.  But her mean words and sour puss added to my pain.

She would not help me across the hall to the bathroom when I asked to go.  As I tried to get there on my own, I collapsed in the hall and laid up against the wall in excruciating pain.  She left me lying there until my blood test results revealed an ominous high white cell count.  Suddenly, that old nasty Nellie of a nurse became Mary Poppins!   She retrieved me from the floor, calling me a sweetheart as she tore at my pajamas to put me in a hospital gown.  An orderly came running and lifted me onto a gurney.  

Rolling down a hallway, I saw ceiling lights fly by just like the traffic lights.  Suddenly, we went through doors into a very cold room where a team of strange-looking men with green masks were waiting.  There was a big, round light above me that looked like the moon.  Suddenly, a cup covered my nose and mouth and a putrid smell made me wince before everything went dark. Unknowingly, I was close to dying and everyone in that room knew it but me.

After the operation, my parents learned the seriousness of my condition.  The head surgeon explained that my appendix was seconds from bursting, filled with an infection that would have been fatal.  They had to work quickly, so I had quite a large incision.  Those doctors, working that Christmas Eve, saved my life.  I would fully recover and no longer suffer those chronic kidney infections caused by an enlarged appendix pinching off the tube from the kidney to the bladder not allowing enough urine to empty.  That defect had apparently caused my illness from about age three and was never seen on the x-rays of that day.  Mystery solved.

After a week’s hospitalization, I recovered, went home and we had our traditional family Christmas.  Santa had indeed come while I was away and, though he left wonderful toys, he also left some black coal in my stocking which made my father belly laugh and me cry.  Years later I’d learn that he would insist I find coal in my stocking every Christmas despite Mom’s objection. He got a kick out of the disappointed look on my face.  

But I was alive and finally well!  My survival was reason to celebrate for we knew friends who had lost their only son at age 17 to a burst appendix.  It was not my time or God’s plan for me to be taken that Christmas Eve.  Though the surgery was a success, something quite ominous would result from the procedure that would change the course of my life.

Are not two sparrows sold for a cent?  And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.  But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  So, do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.  Matthew 10:29-31

Chapter Three

The Monster

Under the Bed"

It was raining like so many other Long Island afternoons.  I left my Catholic elementary school and started the eight-block walk home.  I loved wearing my red rubber rain boots and splashing in puddles, but I was not frolicking today.  I walked in a trance with a familiar sense of fear and hopelessness.  The teacher had called me out for daydreaming in class.  She was wrong as the rain.  It wasn’t a daydream distracting me but a nightmare.  Every step on the wet sidewalk was one dreaded step closer to home.  

I made the turn onto my street.  It was a lovely street of attached brick houses each one with a stoop up to a small patio and front door.  I passed Jeannie’s house – my best friend, an Irish girl with two sisters and three brothers. I passed Nancy’s house next. Her mom was a seamstress and had a closet of scrap fabric.  We would make clothes for our baby dolls on many an afternoon.  Halfway down the block lived the McDonalds.  Mom played canasta there on Thursdays.  Mrs. McDonald had an infectious laugh and made award winning apple pie.  I ran away from home once with a few of my favorite things tied up in a handkerchief, but only got as far as her stoop hoping for pie.

All too soon, I was at my front door and, again, an awful dread ran through my bones.  I’d had a spat with Mom early that morning.  I had talked back and, as I came into the house, I found she was still not in the forgiving mood.  Like so many other days, my father came home at dinner time in his NYC police uniform, handsome, tall but in his usual grump.  He and mom exchanged a few words, then he called me out from my room.  Facing the tirade, my profuse crying and apologizing never did calm the beast.  

Dad grabbed hold of my hair and dragged me back through the house.  The whipping was worse than so many others.  He must have had a bad day at work.  I went limp like a rag doll.  Before leaving me to sob uncontrollably, he shoved me into my clothes closet atop my shoes like trash.  My crying turned to heavy sobs that caused spasms in my chest.  Mom always came in after a while to check on me.  She found me in the closet with eyes swollen, unable to speak coherently between sobs.  

She climbed in atop my shoes, took me into her arms and kept saying softly, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know he’d do this.  No more, I promise.  I took comfort in her arms and her words but, inevitably, there would be more beatings and fear-filled nights.  We both knew it.  It was just one more added and others to follow.  Mom and I navigated through his abuse, racial slurs and irrational behavior at home and often in public.  It was what it was, and I grew up thinking it was somewhat normal behavior.  

Afterall, there was a common wall separating my bedroom from the bedroom of the older couple’s next door.  Their children were all grown and out of the house.  He was a nasty neighbor— a beer drinker, always yelling at us kids to keep off his lawn.  Lying in bed at night I could hear him, drunk and cursing, as he threw his pleading wife against the common wall.  Her cries were like those of my mother’s many a night.  

All this trauma would have been enough for a child, but there was also a monster that I believed lived under my bed.  After Mom tucked me in at night, I dared not venture outside of the bedcovers with a hand or a foot.  Surely, he would grab me!  But then, one horrible night, Mom and Dad’s angry words hit fever pitch!  Louder and louder with terrible fury and cursing, a scuffle ensued in the hall outside my door.  Mom began begging John to stop.  Swallowing hard, I leaped from my bed, monster or not, and stood in my doorway.  

I watched in horror as he strong-armed Mom, screaming and fiercely fighting back. Then, in one terrifying moment, he pushed her down the basement stairs.  I heard screaming, then sobbing, then complete silence.  He turned and gave me an icy stare.  I ran back to bed and pulled the covers up over my head to bed, listening. Had he killed Momma?  Would he come for me next?  I laid there hoping to hear her voice, filled with fear and dread, but I had a plan.  If I lost Momma, I would run away—so far away, this time not even stopping for pie!  He would never find me.  

Soon sleep overrode my fears.  I woke up the next morning only to be stricken with the memory of the night before.  Dad would be gone now headed to work.  I had to see if my mother was—alive.  My heart was pounding.  I got up heading for the kitchen, stopping to peer down the cellar stairs.  She wasn’t lying at the bottom!  I found her nursing her bruises with an ice bag held to her face, trying to sip her coffee at the kitchen table.  Mom was tough and, somehow, she had survived the terrible fall.  But we were in a pattern of abuse emotionally and physically and there was no escape.  

I did have a close pal that went through it all with me. He was a cute little terrier named Buttons.  My father hated pets—dogs, cats, whatever.  But Mom loved dogs and made sure I had one to grow up with.  Once, during a beat down, my Buttons courageously tried to rescue me.  Hearing my cries, he came charging into my room growling and biting at Dad’s pants leg.  John kicked him hard; yelping, Buttons retreated.  Later I heard Dad say he would kill the g—damn dog!  My heart stopped and I went into action!  

I quietly coaxed Buttons to come to me.  He and I squeezed under my bed.  I cupped my hand over his snout to keep him from giving us away.  I lay there, my heart thumping, imagining my father finding us.  I would fight to save Buttons, no matter what!  I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard Dad pour his coffee and light up a cigarette.  If he was going to kill my Buttons, it wasn’t going to be tonight. The monster was not under my bed.

He will cover you with His feathers.  He will shelter you with His wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection.  Psalm 91:4

Chapter Four

The Nightmare Cometh"

Running, I am running as fast as I can but I am in slow motion.  My legs feel like lead and, hard as I try, I cannot pick up my speed.  I am focused on reaching a streetlight ahead, glowing bright and warm in the dark of night.  The chilly air surrounds me as I have no coat – only pajamas.  Yet, I am perspiring from the flat out run for I am being pursued by a determined force.  Fingers grab at my clothing, but I manage somehow to wriggle free of them.  Running, I keep running.  If I reach the light, I will be safe.

Suddenly, I am at its base looking up at the glowing glass.  Frantically, I stretch out my arms as a bird stretches its wings to lift itself and fly.  I rise up!  I am a few feet off the ground illuminated now by the light shining down on me.  I strain my arm muscles to get higher and closer to its warm glow, but strong hands grab my legs and jerk me down.  As in every nightmare, I am captured again and again and taken back into the darkness.  I know well where I am going and what will happen when I get there.  

The running, even in sleep, has tensed every leg muscle.  Lying awake now in my bed, my heart is thumping in my chest.  The dream is very real and vividly colorized in my mind.  I can smell the night air.  I can feel the cold pavement under my feet.  The base of the streetlight is greenish-grey and wet to the touch.  I still see his grimacing face and groping hands behind me.  I have no chance against his strength and stamina.  I am too small, too weak, too vulnerable and I am his.  

Helplessness and hopelessness, planted deep down in my psyche, convince me there is no one coming to my rescue.  The nightmare had ended but it would come for me again and again.  Though I am always caught and brought back, I still run flat out every time to reach that light.  But there is also a voice in my dream—a familiar voice.  I am remembering it with trepidation.   A desperate cry pierces the night air calling out from behind John,  Grab her!  Don’t let her get away!  My heart stops and I hold my breath.  It’s my mother’s voice.

As dawn lights up my tiny bedroom, I focus once again on a picture in my room.  It is a famous painting of two frightened children walking over a wooden bridge alone in a thunderstorm.  A beautiful guardian angel is behind them with her arms outstretched in a protective pose.  I believe it was my grandmother who had assured me that I, indeed, had a guardian angel.  Mom had referenced that picture a few times also to comfort me.  I wanted to believe those children got across the bridge safely.  I didn’t understand much about angels, but I wanted to believe I had one