Three
 

Two Levels of Seperation

I didn't know that the course of my life would be set in a downward-spiraling motion as a result of a violent separation from what little faith I had at an early age. I didn't know that I didn't know. It was a compounded ignorance to say the least. I was simply too young to have any other reaction or experience. By a Grand Design the course of my life had been set and I was about to be introduced to a part of the self that I have to describe as the lower self. It certainly wasn't the part of me that felt and understood at limited levels the faith within as I stood before the honeysuckle. A darkness was introduced to my being, perhaps even awakened.

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My violent separation from God seemed to activate this part of me that would produce the most colorful parts of my constitution. I'll have to describe it as wicked. I'll attach the word decrepit. It was dark and insidious. It seemed to grow and build into this description. In hindsight it appears as if there were a split in myself. There was this innocent little guy filled with an infantile faith who was basically at ease and comfort with everything and everybody around him much like any young child, and then with a single spark there was this other little guy.

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Perhaps we can use the analogy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a blanket to better understand what I came to see so many years later in life as a weary adult. I didn't understand it at the time. How could I? How would you be able to? When we are so young without the benefit of life experiences to guide our understanding(s) it is near impossible to decipher reality most times. We have that benefit of living in the Honeysuckle Dream and then we are ripped away from it. For me the Honeysuckle Dream was a bubble of sorts free from the natural irritants of life.

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I describe it as a violent separation for a great reason. The violent way in which I was moved from one reality, almost a dream state, to another reality, an actual nightmare, was caused by an injurious and destructive force. Again, wholly unbeknown to me, and to those about me.

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While I do not have the full benefit of knowing every nuance of my mother and father's relationship, I will share what I do know, what I was able to gather from them, and most certainly what I have felt, seen, and come to believe by experience. After all, isn't this what many of us are left with? Our experiences? Their "story" became my story as their parents' stories became theirs and so it has been for all of us.

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Mom and Dad were married out of high school. They were forced to get married as my mother was pregnant with me. I arrived on the scene in March of 1968 and my mother always described me as a happy baby. An "all he does is sleep and eat baby." My sister arrived a year and two days later. Our younger brother didn't make it.

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We moved into my childhood home before I can recall my earliest memories. To me it was my first home. It was a small two-bedroom house my parents rented on a street lined with homes more generous in size. The neighborhood was host to family after family with many children. There weren't any broken homes on my street, the families were all intact.

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Though my happiest and fondest memories at times can become clouded by those that are darker in nature there were brief moments of happiness between my mother and father. I was indeed told of this later in life by them, told this by other family members. I also had the benefit of living some of them for a bit of time.

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There were those moments when we were all gathered in the living room before that big ass 70's television set that seemed to be the size of a couch watching Sonny and Cher and a host of sitcoms. (Later on, these sitcoms would become a babysitter and even a parent to me. Most times handing me lessons in life.) The times that our Disney albums spun on the turntable set atop the mammoth-sized piece of furniture. The trips in the old Chevy's and Pontiac's to the local Mister Donut for a dose of sugar and return to the television for the stimulation of Saturday morning Warner Bros. cartoons where my appreciation for classical music was stoked by a rabbit, a pig, a duck, a Martian, and a gun toting fellow.

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What I didn't know was that there was a storm brewing between my parents and there would be no stopping it or the resultant damage it would cause. The cause and affect wouldn't be fully understood by me for a great many years.

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My sister and I were in our bedroom at one end of the house. My mother is in the kitchen cooking dinner. My father is sitting in his chair in the living room smoking Camel cigarettes listening to music while playing with our cat Ramy. The music was loud. I could hear my mother and father speaking over it at the other end of the house. It seemed like it was in the far distance, not just the short walk down the hallway. I can't recall what they were talking about.

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I can remember that our shared bedroom was bathed in sunlight as the sun set on that side of the house. It was the end of the day (dream) but the beginning of the evening (nightmare). It was warm. It was the same type of day I had experienced before the honeysuckle, but it wouldn't end on the same sweet note.

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As I went about whatever I was doing their voices at the other end of the house began to get louder. As I said the music was already loud to begin with. I felt something within that I didn't recognize, something new to me. I now know it was fear. I could not define it, nor could I justify it in this moment. I was simply too young, simply without life experience. I didn't know what to do with it and I believe I let it take me. What other choice did I have?

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As the fear built the voices got louder and louder and as the voices got louder and louder so did the clamors within my mind. My heart began to wrench. This was also something new to me. It felt foreign. Like it didn't belong there.

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My mother and father were having an argument, it was the first that I remember. It was the first of many that would take place from this moment forward. Their voices kept getting louder and louder and it seemed like the music would match them in strength. I recall the beginning of the argument. My mother asked my father to turn the music down and he did not. This escalated the argument, and my mother responded with yelling that quickly turned into screaming. She had this uncanny way of moving from a quiet casual conversation to an explosive volume in yelling then deeper into screaming. It was the sudden escalation that roused me from my dream state of being a child thinking child things doing child things. It was the screaming that activated the fear. Instinctively I didn't want my mother to feel pain, to be bothered, to be hurt. I felt the innate need to reciprocate the protection my mother always extended to me.

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The fuse had been lit between them and what I didn't know was that it had been lit long before this moment. This was simply the explosion. My mother finally screamed two words at the top of her lungs.

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"Get out!"

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That was it. In a flash it was done. I wholly suspect that my father was waiting for these words to arrive, that he couldn't wait to hear them. As if he was waiting for permission or sufficient reason which he would use as an excuse or justification for years to come. A cowardly way of placing blame at another's feet instead of taking full responsibility for his own intent and resultant consequence.

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And with this the volume of the music was lowered. In fact, it was turned off much like my parents' marriage was at this moment. My father left our home. Before he did, he walked down the hallway and into our room. He gave my sister and I a kiss goodbye. The next time he would be inside our home would be nearly ten years later as he raised his fist to my face.

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Here's the piece I didn't know about. My mother was pregnant. It was a boy. He would have been my younger brother. I also didn't know that the effect of what just happened would be the beginning of so, so many endings.

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My sister and I never had a chance. Like so many children at a young age we simply didn't have the strength, knowledge, or faith to withstand the tidal wave that just landed on the shore looking to annihilate us.