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"I'm diggin' up bones, I'm diggin' up bones
Exhuming things thats [sic] better left alone…" Randy Travis
As this Randy Travis song suggests, digging up the bones of your past is not the greatest thing to do for your psyche. But I can't help it. The graveyard of my life, where my childhood, past relationships, and old regrets are buried, is not the quiet, contemplative place that it should be.
Instead, it's a place I visit way too often, to unearth the bones, brush off the protective dirt that has collected on them, sniff their fetidness, and polish them with some tears and "If-onlys." A waste of time and energy, you say? I agree – absolutely. And yet I return compulsively…
My childhood, for example, was a pretty sad place. Not because I wanted for food, or clothing, or a home, but because of a divorce, back in the days when it was still a relatively rare occurrence, shrouded in shame and secrets.
When I was halfway through my fourth year, I helped my Dad pack for a business trip. I felt important and useful. I had no idea that he was leaving…forever.
As my late mother used to tell it, he just came home one day and announced, after eight years of marriage, that he'd been miserable for the past five years and he wanted out. Of course, I'm old enough to know now what I didn't know then, i.e. there are two sides to every story. But it would be almost 40 years before I would really get to hear the other side.
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At four, a little girl's life pretty much revolves around her Daddy, and I was no exception. I absolutely adored him. He could do no wrong. Even the fact of his sudden disappearance from my life was not something I blamed on him. As I saw it, it had to have been something I'd done. Either that or the fact that I was born a girl and he'd wanted a boy. I truly believed it was all my fault, somehow, which at that stage of childhood development is perfectly normal.
However, it is the parent's responsibility in a divorce situation to dissuade children of this notion, but that never happened. My mother couldn't comfort me – she was too distraught and busy dealing with her own emotional issues as well as my six-month-old baby sister. For her to try to deal with my misery only meant she had to be reminded of her own despair, and she wasn't going "there" any more often than she had to. And my Dad couldn't help explain things because, 1) he didn't want to, and, 2) he was gone!
So thinking that I still could make a difference, I wrote notes to him begging him to come back. Where these missives went after I wrote them and dropped them down the mail chute of our apartment building, who knows. But at the time, I sincerely believed that they had reached him. I tried to find his office telephone number on Wall Street, but that proved to be a bit more difficult for an almost-five-year-old.
I remember that once in a great while I would see him for a few precious hours, when he was required, I guess, to come visit me at home. Then he would disappear again, for very, very long periods of time.
I was sad, and I became a loner. I just couldn't play with other kids, and be happy like them -- they couldn't understand the grief that I was drowning in. (All except for one special little girl, that is, whose parents had also recently divorced. Although she moved to California a few years later, we have maintained a unique and wonderful friendship over all these fifty years!) No one seemed to understand, or else they did but couldn't find a way to help – it was easier for people to ignore me, or…take advantage of the sad little girl who only wanted her Daddy.
One example of "taking advantage": There was Eddie*, the male counselor at the after-school program I attended, who would sneak me off into the back rooms of the church basement, where the wrestling mats were stacked, and "wrestle" with me in the musty dark, rubbing hard against me while I wrestled in earnest. It was out little secret. I felt special. It took me years to understand exactly what was happening there...
Time passed, and my Dad remarried and had a son. I got to go visit him and his new family, where they lived on an idyllic little farm in upstate New York (I lived in the city, but longed not to). It was fantastic when I was there. I loved his new wife, their house, the little pond, the tree swing, and their horses. The times I spent there at the farm were very happy indeed. Life was good because I was with my Dad!
But, sadly, the marriage didn't last long, which somewhat dispelled the myth I'd held that the divorce from my Mom had resulted from me being a girl. Absolute proof of this was provided by the fact that my father abandoned his little boy just as thoroughly as he had abandoned me. (In retrospect, however, that little boy grew up much healthier and happier than I did, simply because his mother actually addressed the painful issues of divorce instead of hoping they would magically disappear. That woman, my first ex-stepmother, is a gem of a human being and I still remain in contact with her today.)
So, things changed, again. Now, on the rare occasions that I saw my father, he always brought a beautiful woman along on "our" dates. Obviously I still wasn't enough for him to love. Apparently my only option was to somehow compete with these women…as a pre-teen. I tried being smarter and more interesting, I tried making things for him as gifts, I tried to be as sweet and wonderful as I could be to each and every woman he brought along, in the hopes that maybe they'd put in a good word for me. But no, these tactics didn't work either, and I assumed I must really be worthless and ugly if even my own Dad couldn't love me enough to spend a few hours alone with me.
You might ask what my mother was doing all this time. Well, she had remarried as well, and had given birth to another daughter. She was still, however, nursing grudges and wounds and refused to talk with me about what was going on. She would only tell me that she didn't want me around him. It didn't matter what I wanted. I couldn't get my feelings, my hopes, my dreams across to her -- she wouldn't, or couldn't, listen. I soon realized I couldn't talk with her without her crying and getting upset, so finally I just gave up and stopped trying..
I walled myself off totally from her and the rest of the family. I spent as little time with them as possible. I hated my stepfather, and every night at the dinner table we would get into a fight and I would get sent to my room (no wonder I love to eat so much at night!).
Then, in another incomprehensible act of cruelty as far as I was concerned, my Mom decided, and my Dad apparently agreed, that The Stepfather should adopt my sister and I, and so our last names were changed to his. I was appalled and heartbroken when this fait accompli was announced – the last shred of connection to my father, my last name, had been taken away from me. I was angry. I was sad. I was powerless.
Then puberty arrived, and the shit hit the fan…
To be continued…
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Note: Throughout this series of memories I would like to add the caveat that there is no blame intended to anyone in my family. Life happens – we all do our best at each point in time. I hold myself responsible for my life now, including all that is good, bad, or indifferent. DLS
*Not his real name.
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