In this series of posts, I’m stepping aside so that the nineteen-year-old Younger Self can freely speak to her experience in 1968.

Even with our world moving through the Covid-19 crisis that currently confronts us I will continue to allow this Young One to share her story. Her story unfolds to create a dream of possibility. Thank you deeply for being her tender-hearted witness. 

No one ever asked about her when she was disappeared. There were no photos, no celebrations. No normal. She needed help. She was branded a shameful secret.

Over the years she made the effort to get my attention. There were her periodic attempts to be seen and to be heard. I was busy. I had things to do and places to go. I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t see her. She was too far in the past. I was moving forward. I was looking ahead. My clarion call was, ‘What next? What now? What matters?’  

Then my right arm shattered in December of 2018. The first part of the healing treatment was to remain motionless for three weeks. Sitting quietly in my room I began to hear her. Finally, she could make her way up to the surface of my consciousness. She had experience. She could support me through the current arm healing crisis.

I was appreciative and wanted to thank her for being my healing guide so I did my best to write what I thought I knew about what she had been through. This is when I had to learn that those efforts were not mine to make. I got stopped dead. 

Now I know enough to step aside and admit that she holds the story. It is hers to tell.

I hope that as her journey unfolds, she helps you remember where you have received your deepest gifts. Perhaps your gifts came gently or without being isolated from your world. However today we are all being asked to put ourselves in a self-imposed quarantine and where it is not useful to compare, it does remain true that we learn from one another and she has this need to share.

                                            Make the most of your regrets;
                                            never smother your sorrow,
                                            but tend and cherish it till it
                                            comes to have a separate and 
                                            integral interest. To regret deeply
                                            is to live afresh.

                                                                    Henry David Thoreau

I call mom from the hospital. I let her know that I am not able to return to the ‘special arrangement’ house.

Quiet on the line. Once again, I am making life difficult for my mom. 

I don’t know what will happen next. 

For years dad has made it clear that mom is only to shop at the grocery chain that periodically employs him. ‘They put the food on this table’. She doesn’t follow directions. She shops for the best deals bringing home the cold cuts or roast from the store that has saved her some pennies. Hidden in the kitchen junk drawer, she has a rubber band around saved labels from his store. She sorts through and finds the one that matches her purchase, slapping the label onto her contraband. She makes it clear, as she so often has under many different circumstances, “Don’t tell your father.”

Of course, I don’t know what happens after my call from the payphone down the hall from my hospital room. It turns out that mom drives to the closest branch of dad’s grocery chain.

For years mom hasn’t known what to say to me but she easily makes friends with casual acquaintances. She writes holiday cards to a woman that she sat next to on the bus ten years ago. She makes fast friends with the voters that come to her table at the polls. She knows the produce manager at dad’s most recent store remodel where his carpentry skills are employed. The manager is recently widowed. She has three girls under eight. Mom has let the manager know what’s going on and asked if it would be possible, even helpful, to have me come and stay.

Mom retrieves my small suitcase from the big ‘special arrangement’ house.  She comes to the hospital and helps me into the car. She doesn’t tell me what will be happening next she just drives me to the produce manager’s teeny, tiny house on a side street three miles from where she’ll soon be making dinner for dad, my three sisters, and my brother. Tippy will get the scraps scraped into his bowl next to the dishwasher.

I take my suitcase and walk slowly to the porch. Bedrest. The doctor has said I need two weeks of complete bed rest. The front door is open and the produce manager invites me into the small bungalow. She moves back to make room wrapping her arms around her three curious girls. All eyes are on my bulging belly. Mom breaks the ice by asking the trio for names and ages.

I’m not hearing well. Everything is muffled.

Minutes later attention shifts to the corner of the tiny room and a slow shuffle down the carpeted stairs bring the widows mother.

I’m not seeing well. Everything is blurry. Who is this? Where am I?

The oldest girl gently takes my hand, she tugs at me to follow her up the short flight of stairs into her room saying she’s glad that it can be mine now. The small space is bright, a rainbow sweeps across her twin bed. She tells me that I can use her easel. She shows me the dresser drawer that’s been emptied.

I’m sinking. 

Mom calls me back downstairs and before she leaves reminds me to help out as much as I can. Her mouth moves. I hear muffled underwater sound. 

That first night, alone with people I don’t know, I hear the footstep creak on the stair. Dark, no light showing under the door. I freeze. So scared. Someone is on the stair. Someone has come into the house. Creaking stair. Danger. Trapped. 

I turn my heavy body to one side. I try to shrink under the covers.  Disappear!! 

Another creak. Closer. Closer.

I know who it is. My heart is beating so loudly I know it will be a dead give-away. My fault. No escape.

Creak.

Creak.

Closer.

Closer.

The next creak alerts me … as I begin to rise out of this nightmare.

There’s a paper bag on the toy box at the end of the bed that has my books and art supplies inside. As I fell into my sleep it began to slowly unfurl, the dry paper creating the creak, creak, creak that leaks into my sleep.

Safe.

It isn’t him.

I breathe again. My heartbeat continues flapping like a bird against a window looking for freedom.

It isn’t him. Thank God this isn’t a repeat of the surprise visit to my apartment late last summer. That’s when he came knocking, softly at first, then pounding. He demands,  “Let me in!” I lean against the locked door and tell him there’s nothing we have to say to each other. He calms his voice and gently begs, “Please. I love you. Let’s just talk.” I hesitate a good long while but eventually, I remember how hard life has been for him and I open the door, not wanting the landlady to investigate. As soon as I unlock the chain he pushes inside and violently maneuvers me into the bedroom that I share with my roommate. He pushes my shoulders down so that we sit knee to knee; me on my bed he on hers. The nightstand holds an alarm clock. He’s upset and crying. Now he takes a knife out of his boot swinging it back and forth and pointing it at my throat. Wiping his nose with the back of his hand he says, “I won’t let you do this to me!”

I haven’t seen him since I graduated before I moved out of mom and dad’s house. Now he tells me that if he can’t have me no one else can. (This is not the good guy who stocked grocery shelves and fixed cars. This is a guy younger than me who is beaten regularly by his alcoholic dad, his angry mother throws plates at his head. I thought for a while that I could help.) The clock slowly ticks away 45 minutes when thankfully my roommate puts her key in the door. He jumps up, pushes the knife inside his boot, dashes across the room, pushes past her and down the hall. 

A bad dream.