Convocation

 With all of the crazy going on in the country right now it’s a little hard to find things to smile about. When I got the message a few weeks ago that my favorite cousins from my childhood where getting together, A beacon in my world weary heart was ignited, and the glow brought a warmth to my spirit that has been missing for quite awhile. I actually had a different post prepared for this next release, but I have been waiting to finish the accompanying art installation to photograph and to be honest I got a little distracted by our many side quests. I have found myself a little to exhausted to get the drill out and get to work. 

Chad and Fable have started a food business that has been going really well, and it has been a delight for me to see them both so excited about this project. I have been working on a website for my business and planning an expansion to my offerings, all while working fastidiously on a book while holding a full time nursing job. To say I have too many irons in the fire is an understatement, but I’ve never been good of doing just one thing at a time. Chaos is my craft, so mote it be.  My oldest daughter just had a baby, so we have been doing more traveling to see them. Everything has just been moving along in a blur. All happy things for a change, thank the goddess. 

Time is a funny thing. When people move in and out of your life, the years slide by and before you know it its been 38 years since I have seen one of my cousins, and 29 since I have seen the other. I have of course kept up with them on the internet, it isn’t the same and hugging them or being intimately involved in the lives of the people who once represented times of childhood wonder and discovery.

It called for a convocation of sorts. Im so glad I answered. 

In my life there has been a lot of tragedy and pain. None of us came from what I would consider stable homes. In the early years of my existence, family life was often a ticking time bomb, everyday a new mine field to navigate, more eggshells to dance on delicately to avoid notice and scrutiny. My house, especially prior to my parents divorce, was a place you tried to be neither seen nor heard. It was much the same with my cousins. As I look back on those days, I feel a bit of sadness not only for the innocence lost, but because I can’t actually imagine how difficult life must have been growing up for my father and his siblings to create such brokenness.

 We didn’t get lucky in the generational curse department. The crimes are unspeakable, both against us and played out in the lives of our parents. If we ever get brave enough to write a movie script it would be a blockbuster smash. I’ve always thought Reece Witherspoon should play me by the way, in case we ever make it to the big time.  

I have not ever really had the chance to sit with my father and learn all of his lore, I doubt I will ever get the whole story , but what I do know is horrible. Three siblings raised by abusive alcoholic parents bouncing around from military installation to military instillation.  The landscape is ridden with every form of debauchery, murder, abuse in all its forms, alcoholism, and drugs. The full enchilada of sins against themselves and others. It was actually only in recent years that I learned my natural grandfather was actually murdered when he got into a fight at a bar on an army base. He was beaten so badly that he died of his injuries a few days later. There are other stories here to tell, but they are not mine and I hold those truths sacred, but trust me when I say, none of us escaped unscathed. 

Its weird to say that in the middle of all of that was this tightly woven little group of cousins who in all of he chaos found little glimmers of love and hope in each other other. My dad’s sister was one of my favorite aunts growing up. Though now I see her thru a much different lens, back then she was a protector and a truth teller, the kind that often gets ostracized in families. I remember her sitting me down to tell me her story, and that feeling of finding myself in oddly similar circumstances. I remember her sitting across from my mother and telling her the same stories while she shook her head in disbelief and simply denied that some of the things she told her had also been happening to me. I will never forget that conversation, the denial changed the course of our relationship forever and after that I don’t think I ever really trusted her to truly protect me. 

On a separate occasion when I begged not to go on a visit to my dads house she sighed and said, “He’s drunk, and if you don’t go he might hurt me.” My heart sank. So I piled into the back seat praying we made it safely to our destination, and while we arrived in one piece I spent the entire weekend terrified by the nightly consumption of Pabst blue ribbon beers between he and my step mother and the frequent occurrence of fighting. Sometimes I felt oddly targeted, because my visits often brought such animosity. I still can’t really put my finger on what was happening but somehow I almost always ended up the center of someone being in trouble. The normal survival techniques I had learned didn’t translate to this new environment. I often spent my nights there afraid. Once I saw my father get so mad he ripped his pants by slamming his fist into his pockets and then into a glass coffee table shattering it into a million tiny shards. I can still hear the sound when I picture it. Things like that stay with you. Even if it wasn’t, I always felt like it was my fault. There I was just a kid, wanting to be loved and adored by my father, but I always ended up feeling like a burden that needed dealt with. 

Holidays became horrid occasions. I always felt like I was being fought over like a stuffed thanksgiving turkey, existing simply for the entertainment of others. I still to this day loathe the holidays as they were always wrought with such anxiety. I don’t even answer my phone on holidays most of the time. The thought of answering to find a drunk person on the other end  guilting me for not coming, or hearing my mother  fearful of what I was experiencing, but powerless to help sends me into orbit. One time when I was very small, my father lost his shit while at my aunts house at Christmas, all of the cousins were there, he ended up trying to break into his ex wife’s house to kill her with a knife he had stolen from the kitchen, in a car he had hot wired because my uncle had taken his keys, only to find him arrested by his ex brother in law who was a cop at the time. How’s that for a Christmas story? Unfortunately there are countless others just like it. On the last Fourth of July before my mom lost the house ( because my dad had left her for the neighbor and she had no job or income) He tried to choke me to death and then when I managed to get away from him, my mother went outside to confront him. He hopped the fence and proceeded to throw a giant rock thru a plate glass window. I hid under my bed as he tore our home to shreds. Finally my neighbor rescued me from my bedroom window while I clung tightly to my Cat Napoleon while hiding under my canopy bed. When my grandparents arrived to get me, the last thing I saw was my father holding a gun to my mothers head. I’d like to say that’s the only time I have seen that, but it wasn’t. In his fury he had taken our TV. I spent time at my grandmothers house and then at my aunts house presumptively while my mom got her life in order. Though no one bothered to tell me that she was alive. Everyone was walking around me pretending like everything was fine. I thought however that he had killed her and no one wanted to say it. When I was finally told that all was well, I declared I would not come home until dad returned the TV. It was a strange place to draw my line in the sand, but it bought me more time in the summer with my grandmother and for that I was pleased. I liked being in her big house full of books. It was quiet and calm and full of all the things I was missing at home. The neighborhood wasn’t constantly buzzing with activity. I could play outside without worry about what may happen. I didn’t fear the police who were constantly doing drive by’s and in my mind harassing the residents of Dooley Drive. Growing up in the projects is a whole different experience. You have to have lived it to truly understand. But harassment by law enforcement was a daily occurrence, this forever colored my perception of the police. I would go on to never ever date or look twice at the possibility of being in a relationship with anyone who carried a gun for any reason. 

Despite the uncertainty, nested in between all the crazy, were Bob and Becky. There are two other cousins in the mix who lived with them, but Ron was much older and uninterested in me and Sam was always more aloof, though she was kind to me. My Aunt always in my opinion had cool houses. The ones I remember most vividly where the farmhouses in the country. You could always find a little peace exploring the barns or watching the older kids shoot tin cans off the fence line. I would snuggle up to Becky in her bed and it always felt lovely and safe. Bob to me was always a protective figure, ensuring that no snakes would bite my butt in the outhouse. When Ron would terrorize me by hanging me upside down by my ankles from the loft, Bob would come to my rescue. When they moved to the house in highland they were very close to the housing development my mom was living in after the divorce and I would frequently spend weeks at a time in the summer there. There was still things going on at her house too, but the caliber of crazy was pretty dialed back from what I had been used too. Aunt Pat tried hard to be a support for my mom who despite all her own trauma was doing her best to create a stable life for me, but some wounds heal very slowly. Things between us were always very hard and it truly wasn’t always her fault. Some of it was just the anger I felt at the situation being transferred to her because she was the only person I felt safe being angry with. She might get mad right back but I never feared that she would hurt me physically. I took a lot of my anger and resentment out on my mom. She wasn’t perfect either, but she was trying. 

For a time my Aunt had a craft supply store, she was a very talented painter and crafter. My mom liked to craft as well and I spent many hours in that shop while she taught classes making silly things with my shoebox of odd beads. These were some of my favorite times. When you grow up in an environment where your safe spaces where limited you learn to cling to any port in a storm. It could be that while I was there people tended to be on good behavior which of course was a win for her. She is no longer with us for me to ask her all the things that I wish I could. Im sad to say that the later years of her life were not good. After she was finally able to get away from her abusive husband, things seemed to fall apart for her.  When I was a child though, I always felt that she told me the truth when I asked observant questions. I loved being with my cousins who cut thru my loneliness as an only child growing up in a house where I was constantly terrified. My siblings were from different marriages and relationships so most of the time it was just me and my mom.  After my parents split, due to reasons both economic and academic, I spent a lot of time alone because my mom was trying to put herself thru college. I know that there were happy times, I have scrapbooks my mother made to display them. However, The memory of them is overshadowed by everything else. 

I think they tried their best to be good parents. It seems like an odd thing to say given the circumstances. I just don’t think they ever could see past their own dysfunction to really see how it affected me. Even now when I try to talk about it people seem to have a windshield perspective, forgetting completely the carnage in the rear view. How easy for them to just get over it. I really wish it were that simple. Sometimes I revel at their ability to lock it all away in some proverbial safe. I was never quite that successful. Recently I have had no choice but to revisit old ghosts. Years of high cortisol and living in fight or flight eventually cause autoimmune dysfunction and I ended up being diagnosed with several very scary things. therapy helps, but sometimes you have to stop and take a breath. It can get very heavy at times. With healing comes the process, anger, grief, sadness and finally release. 

One summer my aunt told me she was moving her family to Florida and just like that we all scattered like ashes in the wind, our lives taking us in different directions. My cousin Ron had been kicked out of the house and moved in with my Uncle in Georgia, Bob and Becky and Sam moved away with them. The summers where I once felt a place of safety disappeared. 

During our gathering, as I sat with them together telling our stories and finding ways to reconnect and encourage each other, it felt like home. So often in the kind of chaos we lived thru, people have a desire to make it pretty, and sweep the broken glass under the rug. I think the gaslighting we all experienced made us question ourselves. As we sat there together telling our tales there was an air of validation that I had been longing for. It was nice to know that I wasn’t making it all up in my head. I had witnesses whose stories aligned with mine. I walked away feeling a freedom I have been craving for so long. I can finally put those ghosts to bed, knowing that those things really did happen. It was healing in a way I don’t quite have the words to describe, but I  do know that it was life changing, at least it was for me. 

The thing that I find most encouraging about the whole thing is that as I sat there in a sacred circle with two other people in my family who had broken the generational curses left to us I was so proud. Some of our brethren fell on the battlefield, some still fighting to find peace, but we could sit together and find things to laugh about thru the heartaches of our journey. Our children have never known the violence that we experienced. Our families are happy and healthy and well tended. In my minds eye I see the staff broken on the wheel of life, freeing us from the destruction and devastation we knew as children. It was nothing short of magical. I walked away with the happy memories in the forefront of my mind instead of buried beneath the pain. the sun lit them up like prisms and I danced with them the whole way home. Our tribe, our Little band of warriors could finally put down our swords and shields and find love in our midst. I hope each of them left our circle feeling the same. I love you all dearly and we have indeed not become the definition of what was done to us, we are defined by what we did to never let it happen again.