Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter's Memoir

Terry Helwig

tet 2011 · Simon and Schuster

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A memoir of a girl’s chaotic childhood as she attends twelve schools in eleven years and is forced by her mother’s instability to care for her siblings.

“I left your dad,” Mama told me more than once, “because I didn’t want to kill him.”

She wasn’t kidding.

Mama said she stood at the kitchen counter, her hand touching the smooth wooden handle of a butcher knife. In an argument that grew more heated, Mama felt her fist close around the handle. For a brief moment, she deliberated between slashing our father with the knife or releasing it harmlessly back onto the counter and walking away.

My sister Vicki was ten months old; I was two. Mama was seventeen.

Terry’s stepfather Davy, a good-hearted, loving man, proudly purchased a mobile home so his family could move more easily from one town to another as he eked out a living in the oil fields.

Terry’s mother, Carola Jean, a wild rose whose love often pierced those who tried to claim her, had little interest in the confines of home and motherhood. She’d already walked out on Terry’s father, and in her new husband Davy’s work-related absences, she sought companionship in local bars. She repeatedly left Terry in charge of the household and her five younger sisters.

Despite Carola Jean’s genuine attempts to “better herself,” her life spiraled ever downward as Terry struggled to keep the family whole. Amid transience, upheaval, and their mother’s alcoholism and deteriorating mental state, Terry and her sisters forged an uncommon bond that withstood the long, bumpy erosion of Davy and Carola Jean’s marriage. But ultimately, to keep her own dreams alive, Terry had to decide when to hold on to what she loved and when to let go. Unflinching in its portrayal yet rich with humor and compassion, this memoir reminds us that even if others abandon you, you must never abandon yourself.

“Interesting and eye-opening . . . no matter what these girls were exposed to, they conquered any obstacle.” —Chicago Tribune

“Helwig nimbly conveys her confusion . . . the author’s depiction of her life and her mother’s downward spiral toward parental fatigue is frank.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The world needs Moonlight on Linoleum because. . . . it is what redemption looks like.” —Sue Monk Kidd, from the foreword

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Teresa Helwig graduated with an MA in counseling psychology and for many years was a human development specialist, writing, lecturing, and leading workshops on personal growth and spiritual development. She is the founder and curator of The Thread Project and she and her husband currently divide their time between South Carolina and Florida.