The Red Cord – Part 4
My mom taught us great things. We were the most well-mannered children in public. She bragged that she could take us anywhere and be confident in our abilities to behave properly. We were surrounded by music. She had an amazing record collection and there are fond memories of sitting in front of the turn table discovering the Beatles, Air Supply, The Best of the 80’s, The Osmond’s The Plan, Bread, Greatest Hits of Mozart and the Eagles, Beethoven’s Best, and Kiri ti Kanawa’s glorious arias. For the most part, we didn’t have money for music lessons. But with some simple instructions, I taught myself how to play the piano and my brother taught himself how to play the guitar. He escaped there and would play until his fingers bled. He would tape them up and keep playing. We went to plays and she introduced us to Ballroom Dancing. I fell in love with the Waltz and the cha-cha and my brothers, awkward but dapper in their high-water slacks and little ties, complained that their dance partner smelled like brown sugar. It was in these moments that you attempted to forget what had happened the night before. A paradigm was born. One of denial–or acceptance of things as you thought they were supposed to be. You could forgive the bad and lie about the bruises because what good would it do to tell? When my younger brothers played punching games, it was to hide the bruises already there. Then when Adults asked, they really could say they had been playing. I lied to everyone when they questioned us about our home life. What was the alternative? Foster care? Moving again? Social Alienation? I’d take belt welts from neck to ankles any day of the week.
TBC…
The Red Cord – Part 3
Where does anger come from? It comes from the deepest parts of humanity and from the most shallow. It comes because we have seen too much or not known enough. It stems from Hurt, Failure, and Scorn. Pretty much all other conditions stem from those three anyway, so underneath the surface of this Trifecta, we discover truth.
My mom swam in oceans of Anger, being actively replenished by rivers of Hurt, Failure, and Scorn. Her life deserves a novel of its own, but can be picked up where it intersects with mine. She met my father at a church activity for young, single folks. He played the guitar and wore a Navy Uniform. She hadn’t really let go of the other guy in Uniform, but that guy chose another path. The other other guy left her broken, 19, and the mother of two children. She rented a blow-up raft and set it down on the waters of the River Hurt. My dad was young and new to this religion, same as my mom, and they found common ground in music. They both played guitar and sang and wrote. She wanted to be famous. My dad may have loved her, but his heart broke for my older sister and brother. They married with little Pomp or Circumstance and set to making a life for themselves. Neither of them was ready and neither of them knew how to live in a Marriage of Obligation. My mom, I’m sure, imagined how life could have been with Mr. Other Uniform. My dad, I’m sure, imagined life on the open seas and of exotic lands and people. He didn’t know how to communicate very well and he shut down the harder she pushed. It was around this time that my mom’s River of Hurt converged with the Tributary Failure. Her anger manifested itself in Herculean feats of flying La-Z-Boys, dishes, brooms, purses, pans, and whatever else was within arm’s reach, including arms themselves. When a flying box fan nearly took out my dad, he decided he’d seen enough and he walked out the door. Queue the White Water of Scorn.
I often had dreams that I could shrink myself. I would crawl up under the bed in the small space where the mattress rested on the bed frame and hide. I heard all and saw all, but the Anger flew over the bed and under the bed and around the bed and never quite found me. Although unable to shrink physically, metaphorically I did so with the best of the Magic-Makers.
There was relative joy and freedom in my childhood, playing with Timmy across the street and making intelligent life plans with my best friend Ashley. I once jumped into a neighbor’s pool, unable to swim, to retrieve a ball we had mis-kicked just to prove that I could. The plan to ride my bike down the street without hands and with my eyes closed, didn’t go over too well, but that’s what kids did.
From the plane, my road began to run parallel to others’ roads. I clung to normalcy and even though my road was seemingly out of control, I started to travel with other people in hopes that I could learn or escape—sometimes both.
TBC…
The Red Cord – Part 2
I woke up one morning at the ripe age of 5. A decision had been made over the weekend, through a series of questions and in simple child-like inspiration during a Sunday School lesson. Mrs. Phillips was my hero. She taught me to color in the lines and praised me for my reading skills. She had a kind smile but a stern demeanor. I wanted to teach her something because I felt somewhat indebted to her for the knowledge of such life-changing things like capital letters in proper places and periods smaller than Oreos at the end of sentences. I found a copy of one of our religious books in the house. It had a dark blue cover and fantastic pictures of battles and heroes near the corresponding story. This book was important to me and to my family. We talked about it all the time. I learned about it in Sunday School. We were encouraged to share this knowledge with people we cared about. It was in this manner of thinking that I found a sharpened pencil somewhere in the house, opened the front cover to the Blue Book, and wrote in my darlingest 5 year-old penmanship about my deepest feelings for the contents of this book.
I felt like I was 15. You could not have wiped the smile off my face. I put the Blue Book in my backpack and headed off to school, marching through the doors as if I had just won one of the particularly bloody battles I had read about. Everyone gathered around and we sat on the Reading Rug–somewhat dingy but covered in colorful shapes. We received our instructions for the beginning of class, we read a book, we had a brief lesson on how not to color as Mrs. Phillips demonstrated on the board, and we were set to work. The Book in my backpack was nearly screaming at me. I thought that if I looked over to all the neatly hanging bags on the wall, mine would be glowing. Mrs. Phillips went to her desk and sat down. I looked around at the other kids somewhat engaged in menial Kindergarten activities and decided that this was my chance. With my shoulders back and my head held high, I retrieved the Blue Book from my backpack. I marched over to my teacher’s desk and was barely able to rest my elbows on the edge opposite her. With the book in both hands and butterflies in my stomach, I held the Book out to her.
“Mrs. Phillips? This is a book that is very important to me. I want you to have it.”
I slid the Book across the expanse of desk.
Without reaching for it, she stared down at it as if I had just given her the keys to the very gates of Hell and the Oars to the River Styks. Her face moved upwards slowly. Her hair, burned into my memory, framed her face in short, grayish, mousy curls. One eyebrow was raised. With a single pointer finger, she slid my Book back across the desk.
“I do not belong to your religion and do not need your books.”
Instead of jumping out of the plane, I was shoved—double-foot chest kicked out—backwards.
If I would have had the strength to bend over and take off my shoe, my stomach surely would have been laying there…sopping and heavy. A little hand attached to my body reached for the Book and lifted it gingerly off the desk. If my eyesight had been working properly, I’m sure I would have seen Mrs. Phillips check the desk for burn marks. My feet turned on their own. The book weighed 85 pounds. The door to the tiny Girl’s Bathroom was across the expanse of hard carpet and gray linoleum tile.
I shut the door quietly, flipped on the light after just a moment, and stood with my back against the door. My legs couldn’t take it anymore and they slowly buckled underneath me, causing some sliding and a delicate plop on the floor. That’s when I allowed myself to cry. Buckets of heaving sobs happened next. Doing my best to keep quiet, I didn’t care how long it took to get It out. But I thought that if I could cry long enough, It would dissolve into a million tiny pieces, drown themselves in salt water, and dry in death on my shirt and the bathroom floor.
If I had been standing in the doorway of the plane, I would have seen this road come to an abrupt and decisive Dead End. This road may have contained my life’s work in sharing or studying about religion. It may have lead to World Peace and the Noble Prize. Instead, it ended in the tiny Girl’s bathroom at Brookridge Elementary only a few minutes into the Trip.
Though the Road of Sharing ran into a wall, the Knowledge of What-Was-to-be-Shared did not. It remained, and does to this day, an integral part of the Map. It is, in essence, the parachute. As long as I have the wherewithal to pull the little red cord, the parachute will not and has not failed. Of that I am sure.
TBC…
The Red Cord – Part 1
The road behind me stretches out like a freeway in Texas—both sides visible in all directions and the view somewhat overwhelming, only by its utter vastness. Sometimes I see it in movie reels with bad editing and poor lighting. Perhaps in some cases, there is only one camera angle. Some of it the Editor misplaced. To say I am glad it all happened this way would be a touch on the side of optimism, which I have only recently discovered makes roads worth looking back on. To wish I was anywhere else at this moment would be blatant misrepresentation.
My brain hurts when I try to look at life from way up. I once stood in the open doorway of a little plane with a man and a parachute strapped to my back. The wind whipped at me from every direction and I white-knuckled the bar over the door. There were moments of hesitation where the sane portion screamed. The next moment there was clarity—a perfect understanding of action and consequence and the ability to accept the consequence with complete responsibility. This whole process took only moments because we started rocking back and forth. I let go of the bar, crossed my hands over my chest and counted to three while the man and the parachute strapped to my back heaved us out the door. My breath stayed in the plane and my body hurtled downward until the moment came where it no longer felt like we were falling. I surveyed the ground beneath us, which my mind didn’t interpret as earth, which is why I was able to fling myself into midair without having a heart attack. I saw shapes. Lines. Colors. Graphs. Chaos. Pastures. Buildings. Roads. Houses. Cars. In the moment the movement of cars was detectable, the man pulled the red cord. We were jolted upwards to the sound of flapping fabric and slowing wind. Suddenly silence–thick silence with only heart beats and breathing detectable.
That’s how I see it. Life is a series of indistinguishable lines, colors, shapes, sometimes chaos, at some point cars, and ending poetically with thick silence. Were we close enough at the Beginning to make out the movement of cars, I’m not sure we would have made the leap. Were we able to see the Lines and Colors for what they were and make decisions based on that knowledge, as humans, we would have screwed it up entirely.
So instead, we jump, without real understanding of what lies below, but with the faith that our parachute will continue to open.
TBC…
