The bottom of the jewelry box

October 23, 199?

            Memories are like jewelry.  The most precious we keep carefully stored and only bring out on special occasions, but most are costume pieces, things we carry with us daily and never give much thought to.  And then of course there are those that we wish we could discard but can never bring ourselves to.  These are the ‘painful pieces’ the ones kept wrapped in gauze and safely tucked away at the bottom of our jewelry box.  We rarely take these pieces out and when we do it’s usually in private, reflective moments when we can slowly unwrap them and look upon them unobserved. 

            I found my first gray hair today, a startling moment in a woman’s life but not as depressing as first discovering the tiny lines around ones eyes.  Grow old with grace and dignity, that is my goal, but do I want to grow old alone?  My children will develop their own lives, make their own homes, they aren’t mine to keep forever, I have only been allowed to care for them until they can care for themselves.  Then what?  Lisa says no one wants to be alone, but I’m not sure it matters, after all aren’t we all eternally alone inside of ourselves anyway?  No matter how much  you love someone you can’t actually be a part of them.  We all bear this aching aloneness, as if we have lost our way home.  Perhaps that is what life is all about, perhaps it is a searching, a journey to find our way home again, back to the place we were before we were born, back to the memories we lost at the moment of birth. 

            So now my therapy begins, but where do I start?  At the beginning?  Or with whatever comes to mind?  There are so many thoughts flickering inside of me as fireflies trapped inside a glass jar, each crying, “Look at me!”  So it seems impossible to choose where to begin. 

            “Once upon a time in a land far, far away there lived a little girl.  She grew up knowing that she was Special and that life held only good things for her.  But then one day the grotesque monster called Reality reared his ugly head and proclaimed her his prisoner.  Sadly she discovered there are no keys to open the door to the magic kingdom called life. 

            There’s a saying that goes something like “a bad apple never falls far from the tree.”  When I was a young girl I hated that saying, I wanted to fall far, far from the tree.  And I truly believed I could, I believed if a person only worked hard enough they could be anything they wanted to be.  But being something or becoming something is easy, like playing a part on a stage.  I have BEEN many things in my life - a mother, a waitress, a videographer, a good little girl - but they ere all just roles, parts that I have played.  But inside, nothing changed, I am still just me, the person my genes and my environment programmed me to be, there is no escape through BEING something. 

            To truly change we must change what’s inside, or at least it’s affect on us.  Because after all, if an apple fell into an orange grove, it would still be an apple.  No matter how much it might admire the bright, fragrant oranges, it would always be an apple.  No matter  what role I play nothing will change until I first change the picture inside because I will always be what my reflexes guide me to be, what my inner self see and has always seen, the child of an alcoholic. 

            Children of alcoholics often become alcoholics themselves or abusers of other substances.  They also tend to marry alcoholics or other dependent personality types, seeking perhaps to cure the parent they could not save.  Others become over achievers and workaholics, in an attempt to feel equal to their peers for they see themselves as less, not as good as, beneath others.  And still others live up to this low image of themselves by not being able to hold a job or to deal with the stress of day to day living, they drift aimlessly through life always looking for rescue.  Even if they are never substance abusers themselves, their own children are still prone to these same pitfalls, somehow having inherited the alcoholic tendencies.  Escape from the cycle if very hard and abuse can often be traced back for generation after generation after generation. 

            For most of my life I have denied the existence of these scars and pretended that I had escaped unscathed but I know that this isn’t true.  After all, I married Billy.  I know that the scars are with me and they have dictated my steps even while I refused to acknowledge them.  Now I must bring the shadows into the light, examine them, analyze them, and find a way to get beyond the fear and the pain.

Journey

Windowpanes with fingerprints

Mar a perfect view. 

Ashtrays with cigarettes,

Tell me what to do!

Time an endless carousel

Turning all the same.

Life, the soul’s carnival,

How’d you play this game?

Me, I’m just a poor dreamer,

Dream my life away. 

Done with smoke and mirrors,

All illusions anyway. 

 The grass is always greener,

Flowers, never weeds. 

My yard, it’s much meaner,

Flowers gone to seeds.

Whatever song is playing,

However old the tune.

Me, I’ll not be saying

Words to fit the mood.

Always out of sync and step,

Marching somehow wrong.

A path I haven’t found yet,

A heart that beats as strong. 

But somehow I will find it,

Without map or clue. 

And I’ll complete this journey

And give this life it’s due!!

            Tess slowly rose and stretched her arms over her head.  Her back and shoulders still ached after the long hours of taping and even the hot bath hadn’t helped much.  Retrieving her journal she checked the fire in the woodstove and headed down the hallway to her room, pausing first to look in on Tressa as she slept. 

            Tressa was fourteen going on twenty-five and she made Tess feel ancient.  She had been so thrilled to have a daughter but now she sometimes wondered if they would ever be close.  Tressa had been independent and rebellious even as a toddler, getting into more scrapes and mischief than either of the boys had.  She was still stubborn and independent and everything became a battle between them, from the amount of make up she wore to not being allowed to car date, she fought against every rule. 

            Tess gently smoothed the mass of dark brown curls from her face and bent to kiss her cheek, something Tess didn’t allow when she was awake.  She’d been premature and had spent several weeks in an incubator when they weren’t allowed to hold her.  Tess had often wondered if this absence of physical contact had left her with her aversion to hugs and physical displays of affection.  Her daughter was a beauty and she dreaded the next few years.  Holding her back was going to prove a real challenge. 

            Moving on to the boys room she pulled the covers over Sammy, her youngest, and kissed his freckled nose.  Sammy was everyone’s baby and even at his most mischievous he was the “good one.”  He tried never to hurt her and to always be pleasing.  This desire to please probably came from being youngest.  She could remember feeling the same way as a child, that she needed somehow to compensate for the mistakes of her older siblings. 

            Chad, her oldest was sixteen and at just over six feet tall he overflowed the bunk beds that he and Sammy shared.  In spite of his size he was just an overgrown little boy to her.  She worried about his future, he would be seventeen in the spring but he still seemed unfocused and refused to discuss college or education beyond high school.  He had worked at Pizza Hut for several months not and talked often of becoming a manager but she couldn’t see a future in pizza so she worried.  But maybe she was just pushing him to be something instead of waiting to see who he already was. 

            Uncle Grant had told her he just lacked motivation and together they had tried to instill it in him.  Grant ran the small farm where her house sat, plus he owned an accounting business that provided a range of clerical services to other businesses.  He was moderately successful and had tried to interest Chad in some aspect of his business.  Chad had been amiable but had stated he preferred dealing with the public when they were relaxed and not worried about the IRS, besides he found accounting boring and he couldn’t see doing a job he didn’t like just to make a lot of money.  Tess could see his point, she was very thankful she found her own job fun and rewarding but she had hoped he would show a sincere interest in working with Grant. 

            His bosses at the restaurant really liked him and he had already been promoted to assistant weekend shift manager which was an accomplishment for someone so young.  But pizza maker had never entered her fantasies when she thought of her son’s future.  She blamed herself for allowing him to grow up with no positive male role model, she should have been understanding of his needs, she should have tried to help him become more focused when he was younger, something, anything!  Surely she could have directed him more and done more than she had, which was just to tell herself that it would all work out, that he would grow up someday and find his place. 

            Now time was running out and she worried that he would end up like his dad, drifting from job to job with no real direction in his life.  It seemed all she could do now was be supportive and pray, surely if God could move mountains he could move 180 pound boys like Chad.