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I've long said that my dad is a wildly unreliable witness when it comes to my childhood, and I've grudgingly resigned myself to the fact that my brother's memories do not mirror my own. But what if I am also not the total-recall-minded person I thought I was?
In the midst of the flashback to the car crash, other memories have surfaced. unpleasant memories. the kind that should be discussed with a therapist or a very trusting friend, with a safety net in place, and a support plan. But since my therapist as all but kicked me out and I have no replacement I haven't bothered to bring this up. I'd have to email her - I don't see her again until later this month, and she's damn sure counting on this being our last appointment. She's banking on my primary doc taking over my happy pills. But I don't really HAVE a primary doc since mine retired last year. I saw a PA back in the fall to get meds refilled, and then I'm seeing the FNP on Tuesday for what I hope will to establish myself as an ongoing patient. I don't even know if this practice is covered by my insurance. I don't even know if i have a new insurance card.
Where was I going with this? oh, right: memories. There's no way to rewind and revisit those scenes to verify if I am recalling things correctly. The church is still there, just like I remember it. those three boulders south of the building were a source of much play, as one ever so slightly resembled a slide to my 8 year old brain. The stairwells in back, on the west side of the building appear to still be there, too. probably the same cold damp concrete I remember, a relief from summer heat but yet not, as it turns out. There were witnesses - my brother, impossibly white blonde yet somehow also tanned from hours of outdoor play; another kid - a boy - maybe a bit younger than my brother; and of course, the perpetrator. Older than me by a year or so, just on the cusp of being too old for daycare. Did he have a younger sibling? I don't remember. I do remember there wasn't much in the way of actual supervision, and the fact this daycare was held in the church we also attended meant nothing aside from the fact I knew the building well. Of course we were eventually caught. I remember feeling shame, but I don't recall any adults showing any sort of concern for my safety or wellbeing. I am pretty sure none of the boys faced any punishment, and I have no recollection of my parents saying anything to me about it. Likely they weren't told. This was, after all, the same daycare that had small chairs in the back of a cargo van to fit all of us kids in for school drop-off in the mornings; that had zip-up harnesses in the cribs that forced the babies to stay laying face down for the duration of their naps; and let the big kids completely unsupervised to run amok inside and out of the big-to-me church of my childhood.
As much as I want that all to be a figment of my over-active imagination, I still get angrier than probably normal over dad re-writing my childhood. No, dad, we never did crafts with mom. EVER; she had no patience for us. You see, we weren't what the brochures promised: we were anything but quiet and compliant and timid and seen and not heard. We were just outgoing, active, energetic, creative kids. Looking back, I was the poster child for ADHD, but my brother was the one who got the extra attention for a stammer and other learning difficulties. I was just lazy, didn't apply myself, and had great potential if I could just shut up already. Being the biggest kid in my class didn't help, and early puberty (summer prior to fifth grade, when I was 10) only added insult to injury. What could life had been, if only...
Randomly, I remember a copy of this book on the bookshelf, probably until mom died and dad sold the house. Hell, he may still have it. We didn't have a lot of books around, and the ones we had were never really read. We had the Childcraft Encyclopedia, too, but again, it was more for show, I think. If mom had gotten the help she needed when we were little, rather than just a few years before she died, what could all of our lives been? Was therapy and meds available in the 1970s? Was that self-help book supposed to make things better, just sitting there, only being picked up to dust around it? Am I truly breaking the cycle of generational trauma by not having kids if I'm still harboring all this anger?
Talking with friends about Things To Not Name Your Kids always gets me riled up, but I also remind people that if it's not your name, it's something about your physical appearance that'll get called out. I was called "Too Tall" for most of fifth grade, and a goodbye gift from my class was a sketch someone had done of a character wearing a shirt that said "Too Tall" and all the classmates signed it, and then it was laminated. I may very well still have it somewhere. that they threw me the going-away party was so very touching to me now (we moved in mid-April), but at the time, it was infuriating because I kept getting sent on errands and such and I was annoyed because I just wanted to be with my friends, and it never once occurred to me that they were trying to keep me out of sight so they could pull off the party.
In the midst of the flashback to the car crash, other memories have surfaced. unpleasant memories. the kind that should be discussed with a therapist or a very trusting friend, with a safety net in place, and a support plan. But since my therapist as all but kicked me out and I have no replacement I haven't bothered to bring this up. I'd have to email her - I don't see her again until later this month, and she's damn sure counting on this being our last appointment. She's banking on my primary doc taking over my happy pills. But I don't really HAVE a primary doc since mine retired last year. I saw a PA back in the fall to get meds refilled, and then I'm seeing the FNP on Tuesday for what I hope will to establish myself as an ongoing patient. I don't even know if this practice is covered by my insurance. I don't even know if i have a new insurance card.
Where was I going with this? oh, right: memories. There's no way to rewind and revisit those scenes to verify if I am recalling things correctly. The church is still there, just like I remember it. those three boulders south of the building were a source of much play, as one ever so slightly resembled a slide to my 8 year old brain. The stairwells in back, on the west side of the building appear to still be there, too. probably the same cold damp concrete I remember, a relief from summer heat but yet not, as it turns out. There were witnesses - my brother, impossibly white blonde yet somehow also tanned from hours of outdoor play; another kid - a boy - maybe a bit younger than my brother; and of course, the perpetrator. Older than me by a year or so, just on the cusp of being too old for daycare. Did he have a younger sibling? I don't remember. I do remember there wasn't much in the way of actual supervision, and the fact this daycare was held in the church we also attended meant nothing aside from the fact I knew the building well. Of course we were eventually caught. I remember feeling shame, but I don't recall any adults showing any sort of concern for my safety or wellbeing. I am pretty sure none of the boys faced any punishment, and I have no recollection of my parents saying anything to me about it. Likely they weren't told. This was, after all, the same daycare that had small chairs in the back of a cargo van to fit all of us kids in for school drop-off in the mornings; that had zip-up harnesses in the cribs that forced the babies to stay laying face down for the duration of their naps; and let the big kids completely unsupervised to run amok inside and out of the big-to-me church of my childhood.
As much as I want that all to be a figment of my over-active imagination, I still get angrier than probably normal over dad re-writing my childhood. No, dad, we never did crafts with mom. EVER; she had no patience for us. You see, we weren't what the brochures promised: we were anything but quiet and compliant and timid and seen and not heard. We were just outgoing, active, energetic, creative kids. Looking back, I was the poster child for ADHD, but my brother was the one who got the extra attention for a stammer and other learning difficulties. I was just lazy, didn't apply myself, and had great potential if I could just shut up already. Being the biggest kid in my class didn't help, and early puberty (summer prior to fifth grade, when I was 10) only added insult to injury. What could life had been, if only...
Randomly, I remember a copy of this book on the bookshelf, probably until mom died and dad sold the house. Hell, he may still have it. We didn't have a lot of books around, and the ones we had were never really read. We had the Childcraft Encyclopedia, too, but again, it was more for show, I think. If mom had gotten the help she needed when we were little, rather than just a few years before she died, what could all of our lives been? Was therapy and meds available in the 1970s? Was that self-help book supposed to make things better, just sitting there, only being picked up to dust around it? Am I truly breaking the cycle of generational trauma by not having kids if I'm still harboring all this anger?
Talking with friends about Things To Not Name Your Kids always gets me riled up, but I also remind people that if it's not your name, it's something about your physical appearance that'll get called out. I was called "Too Tall" for most of fifth grade, and a goodbye gift from my class was a sketch someone had done of a character wearing a shirt that said "Too Tall" and all the classmates signed it, and then it was laminated. I may very well still have it somewhere. that they threw me the going-away party was so very touching to me now (we moved in mid-April), but at the time, it was infuriating because I kept getting sent on errands and such and I was annoyed because I just wanted to be with my friends, and it never once occurred to me that they were trying to keep me out of sight so they could pull off the party.
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