JOURNAL, Wednesday, Feb. 6th

I’m so tired these days. Holding myself up and making my fingers move over the computer keys to write these few thoughts at the end of the day seems to require every bit of energy that I have left. Yet it doesn’t feel like the kind of exhaustion that comes physical exertion. My body seems ready to collapse because my brain is too weary.

I’d never have anticipated that writing would be so consuming. Yesterday morning I was up early finishing this latest letter to Claire so that I could bring it to my appointment with Jean. When I had finally finished and had clicked on the “print” button of the computer screen, I went to the bathroom to wash my face and wipe my mouth, to clean myself as I would after vomiting. I came back to the computer and sat there, still and drained, watching the pages spewing from the printer – clean, orderly, yet containing the detritus of memories that have festered for years under a scab of defiant nonchalance.

I’ve heard it said that the Chinese believe that in order to conquer a beast you must first make it beautiful. It’s such a bizarre thought that I’ve never forgotten it; but until recently, neither have I understood it. My beast is my childhood and its memories. I make them “beautiful” by choosing the appropriate words, the most accurate descriptors and committing them to paper.

On the surface I realize that we could have looked like any other woman traveling with her friend and her children. Who would have cared, or even noticed us? But it was important that I write the episodes of our trip across the country with as much emotional accuracy as possible. I remember things not so much as they were, but as I perceived them.

I remember the secrecy of that trip – parking away from the road, keeping to ourselves, never eating in restaurants, never going into stores together, Ariel walking onto the ferry as a passenger, and hiding Claire in the back seat as we boarded. In each of these instances the precautions that were taken tell me that mom was worried about someone following us. I wonder who?

It was through those hours and days in the back of Ariel’s old car that secrecy and uncertainty became bound forever with fear and shame in my life. I live daily with the fear; I’ve learned to accept it. But sometimes the whole concept of my shame overwhelms me. I look at those times and at who I was, and I feel an embarrassment that makes me want to hide. It shames me to think of my lack of courage, of how I should have stood up to them, how I should have screamed all the way across the country. But I allowed us to be led, like lambs. I should have had the strength.

When the little girl in me begins to think of these things, I try to tell her that she did her best; that she was facing a formidable force in these two women who had planned this trip for so long, and who had each other for support. I tell her that it would have taken all the strength she had just to survive.

Sometimes she believes me for a while.


Copyright 2003