Glimpses of How a Child Feels
They told me I sat in a corner on my own when I was one, trying to lessen their burden by keeping myself quiet. Never wanting to make life difficult, I imagine I wanted to take their pain away by pulling it inside of me. The reason for it filled the house we were staying in. He was dying. The man whose seed had created the mother that bore me. The fear of death emanating from him grabbed hold with a tight grip almost as soon as I’d taken the first breath into my new body. They said I loved him. I don’t remember if I did but from the one photo I’ve seen, I imagine I would. A big man who spent his life loving his many children, to then be taken care of with love by his youngest – my mother – when we returned to the village in Italy where she’d lived as a child. I’m sure I made some noise in that year we lived there, as every child must, but in a house where one is dying, the needs of the living must be quieted.
I used to fall asleep gripping her hair. Was I scared? Thinking if I didn’t keep a tight hold on her then death would take her too? I can only imagine. But it feels right since every emotion felt always pulled hard at my heart. And there were many that did across the years. I was, I am, sensitive in nature. Feeling everything to the core of my being, I grew up soaking in what everyone felt while around me. I feel that started even earlier than memories can reach.
I imagine what it felt like while in her womb. She wasn’t too young when she had me at 28 but was still a naive face in the country she hadn’t been born in. The unknown must have overwhelmed her, as she cared for my big sister in the small apartment my father rented with the little he made as a mechanic. They’d arrived in their new country a year before my sister, carrying one grand between the two of them; neither speaking the language being fired off rapidly around them. By the time I was inside of her she spoke it somewhat, but couldn’t drive, still didn’t work, and was completely dependent on my father.
Growing up with my mother, I listened to her as she watched over everything we did with fear, so I imagine the world scared her even more back before I was born. Hearing her speak of when she was pregnant, I’ve heard of the terror she felt the day it ended. Not having understood the doctor who was foreign to her, she’d thought they had another month before their infant’s arrival. So fear tightened its grip on the day meant to hold a celebration, and I imagine it grabbed hold of the baby inside of her as well. I don’t know if that’s the day it seeped into me or if that’s when it reached for my sister since my mother can’t remember whose birth it was when she recanted it. She repeated it to me as if it were mine when I asked for my story, but then my sister corrected our mother’s memory and claimed it as her own. It makes me smile. How a mother can’t keep the birth — or even the names — of her children straight.
I imagine it’s a sign of how much she loves each of us in equal measure. The mother who bore three children, then across the years watched over five who belonged to others. When with a child today, her whole being takes on the innocence of one. The years of struggle slip away, and she easily drops to their level to play. I can’t say I remember her doing that with us. She must have, at least once, but my memories routinely remind of how much time she spent working.
I can’t remember her ever not cleaning, cooking, or cleaning up after cooking. When I was about seven, her amount of work grew when my father’s back was broken at his work one day, and she had to take on more outside our home to help bring in money.
Before that, there’s a flash from when I was five that stands out clearly. Seared in my memory, it shows the fear that came up on the day everyone exchanged their love with Valentines. I can vividly feel what I felt then. Dreading what I feared would be made apparent to everyone; my heart trembled out a fear-fueled question – “What if no one loves me?” That thought made my stomach throw up the blood red punch I’d been drinking, which led to the escape I needed. The next glimpse is of me on our maroon couch, tucked under a quilted blanket, opening hearted cards in the safety of my solitude. No one's eyes, except mine, to see whether or not anyone thought I was special.
A few other glimpses pass by that quickly, to show where the wounds I carried for decades are rooted. The next hit was the week after Christmas, early enough for those in my class to still believe in Santa. There’d been presents under our tree that I was happy to receive, but each had held the name of those who hadn’t understood this American tradition. At school the Monday after, I sat silently while everyone around me rattled off what had been delivered in the middle of the night like magic. I listened to their chatter while wondering why I was the only one Santa hadn’t come to. Landing on the only reason that seemed logical, my mind decided – “It must be that I didn’t deserve anything.”
Then memory jumps to the accident that cut my life as a child into a before and after. Two glimpses show how I felt then. One within a month after it happened, while my father was still laid out flat in the hospital. I was seated at the table in our narrow kitchen with my mother, her sister who had twenty years on her, a cousin who was closer to my mother’s age, and my older sister. Everyone was discussing how my father had fallen off a platform set at its highest level while cleaning the garage that was moving to a new location. My guilt sprung by the thought of him falling, I voiced what my heart feared was true. Too serious for someone so young, I was sure that this was my punishment for not having helped keep our house cleaner. All the women in our circle smiled, charmed by this statement spoken by an innocent child, but none could see how much guilt was packed inside such a small body.
As soon as he could stand, my father came back to us. Walking home from school next to my sister, I saw him sat on the steps waiting. Fear gripped me. I knew this shape in the distance was my father, but I had no memory of him other than the sound he’d made when his anger floated up to fill the darkness my mother had tucked me into. ‘Before’, he’d spent most of our waking hours working, leaving me with little sense of him other than that sound, so the man sat there was a stranger.
Too little to know that what looked bad could be good; I wasn’t able to see this break as a Godsend. It gave us time together, which is what a child needs most from a parent. Despite receiving that which was needed, I felt the fear of God come down into him for not making the money he believed his family needed. That fear tightened his nerves, along with mine, near the end of every month, but what came in always got us to the next one, and he was able to stay close to us across all of them.
During the months we had off for summer, we spent our days swimming. We must have done it before but it’s hard to remember those times clearly. There is one glimpse that might have come from earlier. It’s tough to know what age I was since I can’t see all of me sat on the edge of that pool. Just two little legs leading to two small feet that were pressed flat against the inside of its pebbled interior. With his arms spread wide, I see my father in front of me, yelling out to me to – “JUMP”. Working up my courage, I flung my body forward. He caught me but despite his best effort couldn’t teach me how to dive in, head first. Not that day, nor any other. Fear’s grip wouldn’t let my body loosen up enough to do that, but I still loved jumping in and splashing around in the water.
We spent every hot day at a public pool for hours, packed in with all the other small bodies that were circling us. Our mother brought us, walking twenty minutes each way, which is what it took to get there from the yellow house, wedged in-between other houses, that by then was owned. I imagine she enjoyed our days in the water, but I never asked and can’t remember what she did while there. This woman, who had grown up walking down the side of a mountain to get to the ocean, raised us full of a love for the water. Creating a sacred summer routine that bridged our childhoods.
When not wet, I remember wrestling. I must have been around ten because my sister wasn’t too old, nor my brother too young, to want and be able to join in these matches. They were held nearly every night after dinner while my mother was out working the job as a cleaner that she’d gotten. Together, we made a ring in the living room by moving all the furniture to the periphery, and then the three of us would gang up on our father. Using his strength gently, he pushed us around as we repeatedly rushed him. Creating a pile of bodies that covered him, joy rushed through my body as we screamed and filled the house with loud laughter. It’s good we only had that type of fun at night. I imagine it would have been too much for my mother to handle. Her fear would have screamed the whole time that someone or something would get broken.
Then there were the hours we were quiet, watching back-to-back blockbusters every weekend. I remember being the one who picked our rentals off the shelves that housed rows of videos, but I imagine everyone had their say. Keeping it PG, we’d sit curled up in the four corners of our two couches, munching popcorn while watching future classics. Captivated by the range of emotions exchanged in front of us, tears streaked my cheeks every time someone got hurt or laid dying. With no control over how much their pain gripped me, I didn’t mind since I loved feeling the depth of every emotion. The best was felt when two people, in love with each other, ended up back together. I never understood the middle of those movies though, when the two were pulled apart, but I loved the endings when they were reunited.
Despite seeing those in love overcome every obstacle, I never imagined that my parents loved each other. I didn’t think about it while watching those storylines about strangers but the belief that they didn't would fill me whenever their yells erupted to scream out our family’s backstory. I hadn’t been to Italy outside that year I was too young to remember so there were no visuals to go along with the names they flung at each other. Just shadows from a lifetime ago, each a perpetrator of insults too terrible to be let go of for anything, even for the best interest of children. What I hadn’t been around to live through rose to scald my senses with red-hot anger during the week that came monthly when neither could suppress the blame still stuck inside of them.
Trying to protect my heart from the ugliness being pelted, I turned to the lives of others for solace. Spending hundreds of hours reading thousands of words that described characters who seemed to have it easier, I couldn’t get through enough books fast enough. Across those years that we lived wedged in there, my sister and I walked to the local library weekly to check out piles of books to bring back with us. The happiness I got wandering those rows, surrounded by all the stories I had yet to crack open, kept a light lit inside of me. My mind grabbed hold of the escape they offered and created a vision of the perfect existence, one that I held close to my heart. I would imagine that I was alone, locked in a room full of wall-to-wall shelves packed with books that were lined with words describing other people’s lives. In there, I could escape the fear that wouldn’t stop grabbing at mine.
The screams that drove my mind into that room played a big role in this life but memorialized elsewhere, have since been silenced. And each of the harder glimpses shown here, those chronicling the deepst of core wounds, have been used as tools for healing. With that darker emotion excised, the only glimpses that now easily jump to mind are the good ones. There’s plenty more that carried a lot of smiles that haven’t been captured here but since they follow the same theme as those that were, it didn’t feel like they needed repeating. All the glimpses that have been described – the good, the bad, and those that once seemed inconsequential – are the ones that rose on their own to paint the deeper shades of me.
Sewn together, they show how deeply a child feels, and how the fear that plagues a family can work its way into one who’s young. I fought that fear for years, long after I left this childhood behind. Jumping repeatedly, and often, even if there was no one close to catch me, that fear followed the life I led everywhere. Falling plenty, it took decades before I stopped leaping between people, companies, cities, and countries long enough to take stock of all the glimpses I’d been running from. Tracing my story back to the beginning, I took my power back from the fear that was still tightly wrapped around the little girl inside of me. That girl, who will always live in these glimpses of time, is a permanent part of me. Feeling for everything she felt, the woman I’ve grown to become holds her gently, facing what we feel in every moment and never letting fear tighten its grip on our heart again.
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