Britney: Inside the Dream. Steve Dennis
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Under their marital reconciliation, Lynne found it hard to contemplate turning over a new leaf in the trailer-home where the hurtful tryst apparently happened. Jamie had eyed some land further down the road from Simpson’s Trailer Park, locating a property in need of improvement behind Greenlaw Baptist Church. By July 1980, no doubt flushed with his good earnings from short-term contract work, the young couple took out their first mortgage on the bungalow and an extra plot of adjoining land for a total of $34,750, putting down $18,580 in cash. This is the property that would become Britney’s childhood home.
Lynne describes those first twelve months back together as ‘a year of peace’, and she happily fell pregnant with Britney. A new start and a new addition to the family became the redeeming factors in rebuilding the marriage, but it seemed hardly a stable set-up to those who looked on with concern. The emotional wounds caused by Jamie’s infidelity can hardly have healed in twelve months; in fact, Lynne’s suspicions were never slayed. Inevitably, from the moment Britney arrived in the world, she had an expectation unwittingly heaped on her shoulders.
Britney the Saviour had been born…Born to save her parents’ marriage.
Britney was born into a loaded situation. From the moment she was conceived, she was charged with the unconscious purpose of saving the marriage. She was not entering a healthy environment; she was entering a fragile truce. Whatever the underlying reasoning, this marriage’s hopes of happiness rested on Britney’s shoulders. That unwittingly placed on her an agenda no one will have been aware of, but one that will have left its load imprinted on her psyche. ‘Britney is here…this time things will be different!’ was a hope projected onto her.
It’s sometimes hard for the layperson to take in, but a baby picks up messages and detects every experience through the mother’s own psyche, heartbeat and nervous system, and all that information is imprinted. Even during pregnancy, Britney will have ‘felt’ whatever anxieties Lynne faced. Was she right to give Jamie another chance? Would he keep his word? Would he be the father she needed him to be? Would he start drinking again? So when she’s born, she’s automatically at one with Mum, tuned into her anxieties. This would explain their intense bond. This inherent anxiousness would go a long way to explaining much of the nervous energy Britney exhibited, and the anxiety she would carry throughout life.
The family would mostly be unaware of these factors. Unconscious influences are responsible for many human actions and behaviours, though.
Britney has always said her childhood memories make her such a ‘family person’. She once wrote on her website that she remembered watching movies with her family and ‘feeling so at peace’. At other times, she has recalled her father’s crawfish boil parties—Louisiana’s equivalent of a barbecue—and her mama’s specialities: chicken spaghetti and homemade ice cream. For breakfast, it would always be a southern favourite, cheese grits—‘breakfast for champions’, according to Jamie. It would be inaccurate to suggest this was a continually unhappy childhood; clearly it was not. For Britney, this domestic environment represented the norm and undoubtedly she would have cherished those times when Jamie was present, loving and attentive, together with Lynne.
Indeed, Jamie was determined to embrace his second chance with Lynne, keen to be a better father and husband.
Friends of Jamie Spears describe him as ‘a man with a big heart, a good soul but a stronger liver’. One lifelong friend in Kentwood, who wishes to remain nameless, jumps to his defence and says: ‘If that man gets the chance to put things right when he’s screwed up, he’ll do all in his power to make amends. He’ll do it to prove it to himself, to prove it to God and to prove others wrong. Whether he succeeds or fails, he gives his best.’
The general consensus is that Jamie is a ‘stubborn son-of-a-bitch’ with flaws he’s all too aware of, but this ‘does not make him mean-spirited by nature’. The distinction drawn is that between the great guy who is sober, and the crazy guy when drunk. Back in 1981, Jamie focussed on being that great guy.
There is a saying in Kentwood—‘Getting Right With God’—and Jamie repented of his sins, rededicated himself to God and undertook voluntary work at the family church. Prior to Britney’s birth, he decided half his problems were caused by the stresses of work that took him away from home. So, with the money that work had earned, and after moving into the new family home, he and Lynne decided to build and open what she has referred to a ‘health spa’. It sounds impressive, conveying images of a Champneys of the eighties. In actuality, it was a large barn with a metal-structured extension at one end, built on a plot of land adjacent to their home. Called ‘Total Fitness by Jamie’, the sign, in white lettering, was nailed to the double doors. To help fund this venture, they took out a further mortgage for $50,000 in 1981 and, suddenly, Kentwood had a gym with the latest running and weight machinery, a hot-tub and a steam-room. In truth, it was more gym than health-spa.
Nevertheless, it represented a brave move at a time when the concept of healthy living and wellbeing was in its embryonic stages, but Jamie had a vision. His life-long friend comments: ‘Jamie worked out, and was entering and winning bodybuilding contests. The man was built like a house and he thought he could turn his business into the next Gold’s Gym.’
For $300 a month, locals had somewhere to work out and, at one time, the venue attracted around 120 members. Initially, all seemed well but much as Jamie felt ready to meet his new responsibilities, he simply wasn’t capable of doing so. Alcoholism’s demons proved too strong to conquer alone and soon he was drinking again. As with Bryan, Britney’s birth seemed to trigger this return to the bottle. Twice he had been ready to be a father, and twice that joyous event had sent him over the edge.
From this moment on, son and daughter witnessed regular slanging matches between their parents. Tensions were not helped when brothers Austin and Willie Spears moved in for a spell, sleeping in a treehouse that Jamie had built for the kids.
Jamie’s friend has commented that sometimes it got ‘nasty’ between Jamie and Lynne: ‘They were always at each other’s throats, fighting like mountain lions. ‘Course it was traumatic for the children; it had to be.’
In the family, Jamie earned the nickname ‘Captain Red-Ass’ because of his temper: ‘He was the sweetest man and good as gold one minute but once you’ve pressed the wrong button, you best run and hide—and Lynne knew how to press the wrong buttons,’ said Britney’s Aunty Chanda. She witnessed many storms pass through the Spears’ household because, for a two-year spell, she lived with her husband John Mark, Jamie’s brother, in a trailer on land near the house. Her observations are worrying and instantaneously remove the perfect-family image promoted when Britney first shot to stardom. The truth is that what Britney witnessed will have been deeply traumatic for a child.
When the fights happened, Britney sought refuge in Chanda’s trailer. Her aunt paints a picture of a sweet, but timid girl—it seems an environment of constant hollering and verbal abuse rendered Britney quiet and withdrawn; that’s until she had to perform.
Aunty Chanda said: ‘She stayed with us quite a bit to get away from Jamie’s drinking. It scared her. Jamie and Lynne would fight about anything and everything, and the same pattern would happen: she’d take off to her sister’s or mama’s, come back, Jamie would quit drinking but then he’d start again.’
One night Aunty Chanda vividly remembers is when Britney’s brother Bryan was sleeping over at the trailer with two friends. Jamie and Lynne’s place was already full because Austin Spears was temporarily staying over. The next thing Chanda knew was a rapid knocking on her trailer door—and there was Lynne, sobbing: Apparently, Jamie came in after drinking, shouting and screaming at her. Austin stuck up for Lynne, and then him and Jamie started fighting. Lynne then took off and came to our house.’
Chanda McGovern points out that these were not sporadic incidents. Far from a blessed home, the domestic situation seemed blighted by the self-hate of an alcoholic’s love for drink and the reactionary dramas of his co-dependent wife. In the middle ground stood Bryan and Britney. Now it becomes clearer