I sit here at my desk, in my cozy apartment on the third floor of this heritage home: warm, safe. I watch the children through my window, trick-or-treating their way down the street. I see luminescent headbands, flashlights, reflective clothing and a car inching along the curb behind each cluster of kids. They are watched over. They are safe from any harm that the darkness of night or perversity might hold.
When they return to their homes, tired and laden, there will be someone with them to oversee the triage of goodies -– throw out the gum and taffy (bad for the teeth); put the apples in a bowl (peel and cut carefully, make applesauce);
dispose of homemade goodies that do not have the name and telephone number of the maker. Those children are safe.
My childhood
The positives:
The smell of cinnamon
solitude and quiet places
Books
Choices
The negatives:
Fear
Uncertainty
Being different
Being overwhelmed
I reread my letter to Claire and I see how I’ve learned to fight back. When I become stressed, I take control: I make lists, I identify, I quantify, I analyze. But this time is different -– no matter how much I focus on my lists, the tears still appear.
Yet I didn’t cry as I wrote Claire’s letter. The words came, one by one, precise in their meaning, making me uncomfortable at times, but never bringing on tears.
Mental images often become distorted with time. When I think of my memories, they have a power over me, from years of living with them and trying to hide from them. But when I put them down on paper they seem to be robbed of much of that power. The written form gives them a definite shape and size: black ink on a white page, 12-point characters, one paragraph long. Quantifiable. Finite.
While I was writing about mom, a memory surfaced that I didn’t want to share. It was mine alone –- before Claire. I was frightened by it and didn’t know how to deal with it. But I heard Jean’s voice in the back of my head reassuring me; I can look at these things, observe them one at a time, turn them over in my hands as if they were the skeleton of a long dead image. They can only frighten me if I let them.
I am alone in the living room of our apartment. I am playing with a sock monkey that someone has made for me. I make him dance and hug me with his long grey wool limbs. He kisses me with his big red wool lips. Footsteps -– quiet, slow. Pressure on the back of my head, pushing it forward, my chin against my chest. –- Snip! Mom releases my head and hair (the whole back section, really) in her left hand. I’m confused. I cry.
“There,” she says, “That’s better. Now they’re all gone. “ She quickly rolls back onto her heels and rises. She goes to the kitchen to dispose of my hair. When Bill comes home, he asks what has happened to me. She turns to look, to see what he means.
“Oh… that,” she says going back into the kitchen to prepare the next day’s orders. “Starla got hold of the scissors. Did you leave them out?”
Bill took me to the hair dresser down the street. They all laughed that such a big girl would do such a silly thing.
Copyright 2003
