Unconventional Beginnings
Where do I begin now? I ponder this question as I peer out my kitchen door to gaze upon my neglected swimming pool. I haven’t done anything with it since Hurricane Barry blew through last summer. I am utterly disappointed in my poor custodial management of the pool.
In my neglect, nature has taken over and new life has sprung from the transition. The water is now a keen shade of viridian green from the leaves and grass that have fallen over into it.
The tadpoles are plentiful, and I find watching them break the surface to eat during a rainy afternoon very therapeutic. I continue to observe them as they bobble up and down, one after another, almost in a musical pattern that mesmerizes me.
I know I will have to get started on the cleaning soon, and I do ache at the thought of what demise lies ahead for all those little creatures.
I guess there is no rush…I am stuck at home on furlough from my job, due to the Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19.
The whole world has been quarantined from each other.
Meaning, job shutdowns across the board that eventually led to job losses. No more eating out on Friday nights with our Besties. No more bar hopping for the wicked. No more tattoos for the ink addicted. Everything is shut down and the roads are bare.
Weekends are usually bustling with noise and activities down Main St in New Iberia. Now it is akin to an eerie ghost town.
Funny, I never thought I would miss the noise…
Everyone was hoping the quarantine would be lifted soon, so we can all get back to life as it were. I had a feeling it would last longer than what the initial two-week period first outlined.
I was correct…
he quarantine has been extended twice since the beginning, which caused me to fear the inevitable. Initially, I was considered an “Essential Employee”, however, my “essentialness” ran its course when the businesses I delivered first aid and safety supplies to, began shutting their doors.
I received a text from my boss, on a meeting for “Business Updates”, which struck me as odd and left an unsettling feeling in my gut. I sent a group text to my fellow Service Sales Reps to see if any of them had received the same text.
We discovered that text had only been received by three of us. That solidified my worry and I knew I was about to be released as an employee, due to market conditions.
I was the last person hired. I did expect to be the first one relieved of my duties.
For now, I am on a month-long furlough with a possible extension to a second month, if the quarantine isn’t lifted. I have decided to take full advantage of this time to take care of some tasks that I have been putting off around the house.
Interestingly, my husband has encouraged me to write. I guess I will have plenty of time to recall my childhood, as I go about my days waiting to return to work.
Recollections of memories can be cathartic or paralyzing, depending on the memory…
Going back as early as I can recall; most people would find it unbelievable that I can remember the moment of my birth. It seems like a faded dream now, but I can recall the brightness penetrating the darkness that had become a turbulent wave of events to expel me from the warm comfort, the constant heartbeat, and muffled sounds of my mothers’ womb. I remember the piercing sensation on my body as I entered the cold environment.
We do not enter this world alone…or at least I didn’t.
I had a constant companion up until the moment I learned to speak my first sentence. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, other than it was a voice that spoke a language that was familiar to me, but unknown in this world. I could only hear the voice in my mind and the only way I could communicate with it was internally, in my mind.
It is a very odd notion, when I write about it now, to realize the relationship I had with this voice. The voice in fact was very encouraging, while assisting me through the early stages of learning. As I began to crawl and walk, the voice began to prepare me for its impending absence that I would eventually understand.
Teaching was its purpose to ease me into this life.
Soon, I began learning words and the voice warned me that once I was able to form a full sentence, the threshold of communication would be closed, and I would no longer be able to communicate with my internal companion. The voice was not allowed to remain with me, once I acclimated to the world.
Even as a small child, we can have arrogance… I remember communicating to the voice that I would never forget how to cross the threshold, but I was wrong.
The exact moment that I spoke my first sentence and understood what I said, the voice language was lost to me. I believe I was supposed to forget the voice entirely, not just the language. By mere chance, I held on to the memory of it. I count myself luckier than most to be able to recall my companion and those earliest memories of coming into this world. I have often thought of the voice and wondered if I would ever hear from it again.
To this day, the voice has been silent… Completely silent…
My upbringing did not offer me a sense of security, like my companion did. It was riddled with changes and heartbreak. Shortly after my first brother, Will, was born, my Mother (Anne) and Dad (Carl) separated. Their relationship was torrential, to say the least. Anne was young and it didn’t help that she was free spirited and enjoyed a little ganja from time to time. Carl was an abusive and binge alcoholic, fueled by a disorder we now know as PTSD.
The two combinations did not mix well.
From the beginning of their relationship, Anne was burdened by her pregnancy with me. It didn’t help matters that Carl’s mother was not agreeable to the marriage. Their accord was doomed from the beginning. Carl married Anne because she was pregnant with me; he felt indebted to his responsibility.
They had been married for a little while, when Anne found out that she was pregnant with a second child. This was another strain on their already fragile relationship. Eventually, the tension became too much. Carl left after a horrible fight. His leaving left all of us in a vulnerable way.
After Anne finally gave birth to Will, Carl thought he would come back and work things out, but it didn’t go as he had planned. During Carl’s absence, Anne had met another man, so her heart was just not into the marriage anymore. Carl took us for a few weeks to spend some time with him, then we ended up going back with Anne.
I am compelled to remind the reader that this was the early-1970’s, times were different, and parenting skills were not taught. There were no “how-to” books to provide a guide and no laws to encourage a protected upbringing of a child.
During the 1970’s, people were expected to use common sense, a virtue that was sorely lacking in Carl. He would often leave us in the care of strangers, or alone at the house, or alone in a car when he had to run errands.
Leaving a child with a stranger during those times without performing a background check was nothing out of the ordinary.
No one questioned it.
We eventually moved to Bastrop, Texas with Anne and her new man, Nate. He had found a small trailer for us to live in as a family.
One blissful morning, while I was keeping myself entertained on the front porch outside, Anne and Nate were inside working on what I thought was cleaning the house. A curious smell began creeping out of the screen door…so I sniffed it. It had an earthy and intoxicating smell.
I was getting my first contact high on the front porch but didn’t know it at the time.
Initially, I felt lightheaded and weightless. This feeling made me giggle at everything I saw and heard. As the effects saturated my senses, I began to feel heavier, so I laid back on the porch and watched the clouds and laughed all by myself, in a deep sense of euphoria. For a long moment, everything was serene, and I was not anxious.
To this day, I still associate the fragrance of marijuana with that memory.
Nate came outside to get me; he was curious as to why I was so giggly. Anne walked outside and realized that I was high. They both laughed and made fun of the situation. They were eager to show me something in the house, so they escorted me around the hall, to my bedroom, laughing the whole way.
WOOHOO!! It had bunk beds!
They had been working on putting up a set of bunk beds for me and Will. I was delighted! I couldn’t wait to sleep on the top!
That night, Anne tucked me into bed and said a little prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take.”
If only we could have been more specific in that prayer, maybe, just maybe I would have woken up the next morning without a care in the world.
A sudden jolt, combined with the force of impact on the floor, woke me up a few hours into the night. I began screaming in pain and confusion. Anne ran into the bedroom to check on me.
I had rolled off the top bunk, in my sleep, and landed on my right arm, breaking it. Anne tried, but failed to console my pain. Nate realized that my arm must have been broken, as he insisted to take me to the hospital. The ride to the hospital was pure torture. Every bump and turn caused more horrendous pain.
By the time we got to the hospital, I had already passed out from the agony of the break. It would be a long wait before the Doctor could see me. In that space of time, my bones were already trying to fuse back together. It is amazing how fast a child begins to heal.
Upon examining my arm, the Doctor confirmed their worst fear and informed them that I would need to have my arm reset and a cast placed on it.
My arm would need to be broken again!...
I’m not sure any person could comprehend the shock of those words, unless they are being told it was going to happen to them. The events that played out from the time I fell from the bed, to the moment the cast was placed on my arm, were enough to cause any child a lifetime of traumatic scarring. It was the first, longest day of my life.
Tiny as I was, I put up such a fight that it took 6 people to hold me down while the Nurses strapped me to the table. I screamed, I cried, I pleaded. I fought the straps and kicked. I even tried to bite a nurse! I was too young to sedate, so I would have to endure the events while fully coherent. Anne kept telling me to look at her, which wasn’t helping the situation.
How could I trust her? She was allowing these strangers to tie me down! She was going to let the Doctor break my arm again! I felt an intense burning in my arm, so I looked over and saw the Doctor sticking a needle in it.
Oh, the horror!!
The sight of that needle only intensified my fight, as I was extremely terrified of needles.
I just wanted it to be over with and I wanted the pain to go away. I passed out again. I couldn’t say if it was from the struggling, or the pain. Either way, I fainted. When I woke, the Doctor was wrapping the cast.
He looked at me and said, “It’s almost over, once the cast dries, you can draw on it.”
What…I can draw on it? I thought that was neat, even though I was still angry at the Doctor. I liked to draw; I had been good at it from an incredibly early age. The Doctor finally completed the wrap on my cast. My arm was throbbing, but it was tolerable. It was finally time to go and I was relieved.
To get my mind off the experience, Nate suggested we go for an afternoon hunt. So, we piled up in Anne’s station wagon and headed out to a dry deserted area.
Nate reminded me of an Indian. He was tall and dark skinned, with ebony black hair. He had a lean structure that was chiseled with muscle and he was incredibly agile. Nate sat us up around the car, as he took to hunting for snakes and birds. I was tired, so Anne sat me in front of her and braided my hair. She had made several hair-ribbons out of yarn, with pompom puffs on the end. She used the blue and white pompom to tie at the end of my braid.
I became bored, rather quickly, so Nate came over to show me how to hunt lizards. The ground was so dry that its crust was cracked into different sized shapes of dirt patties. I began pulling up the top of the crusts, like they were pizza pies, and then realized I could throw them like a Frisbee.
A past time that I still enjoy.
As the day waned, we loaded up and headed back to the house with a few quail and a couple of snakes. Anne kept the windows open, as we drove down the highway, to let the breeze cool our sun kissed skin. I stuck my arm out to feel the air tickle my skin under the cast. The wind cooled the heat that had built up underneath it.
My blue and white pompom hair ribbon had come loose, so I picked it up and held one end, sticking the other out the window to watch it dance in the wind. For a time, I forgot all about my pain and just enjoyed the dance of the ribbon. Every sensation of the moment was relaxing and surreal.
I decided to get risky and let both pompoms blow out the window as I held the center of the hair ribbon. I was fascinated that the wind made it look like magic as I would release my fingers and the ribbon stayed on my palm whipping in the wind behind my hand. Anne gave a brief warning to be careful not to lose the ribbon. I assured her, “I won’t lose it. See! The wind is keeping it stuck to my hand like magic
No sooner had I uttered the words from my mouth, then the wind whipped around and peeled it from my open hand. I couldn’t believe it! I stuck my head out the window and watched as it blew away, falling to the road behind us. Anne refused to turn around to go back and get it. “I warned you not to play with it out the window.”
A hard lesson in heeding warnings…
I sat back down in the seat and pouted. After a while, I took a crayon and scribbled on my cast, in the light of the radio, as it played “Honky Cat” by Elton John. I drew a picture of my lost ribbon, which was my favorite ribbon. The loss of it still pains me.
I wish I would have listened to Anne.
On a sunny morning, after I got my cast, we got up and rode to the store. Anne and Nate got out, leaving me and Will alone in the car.
In Anne’s ignorance and haste, she didn’t realize what was being plotted against her. It had been several months since we had seen Carl. In his absence, Carl had collaborated with his mother to take us from Anne.
It was that morning that Carl followed Anne and Nate to the store, and he took advantage of her leaving us in the car unattended. After Anne and Nate disappeared inside the store, Carl and his mother quickly removed us from the vehicle.
My heart aches to think of the torment that Anne went through when she came outside to an empty car, finding her children missing.
I wonder… was a missing case filed?
Did she call the cops?
Did she realize right away that Carl had taken us?
I remember longing for her immensely. Why didn’t she come get me?
Did she not love me anymore?
re…
