Someone Else's Story

I have a younger sister who lives just a short walk from my house.  She is a beautiful girl with long brown hair, a bright smile and a trendy sense of style that has never crossed the threshold into my comfort-only, hippy tinged closet.  She works for the Chicago branch of my father's company and volunteers at PAWS animal shelter in her spare time.  She doesn't know I exist.


I have an aunt with lovely hard earned lines on her face.  She has lived a life spanning the world with 20 years service to the US justice department, experience as the executive director for the USO's Okinawa base, time spent as a Peace Corps volunteer to Cameroon, and recently, she traveled to build houses and focus on the betterment of life for women in southern India.  She fascinates me, though we have never met.


My father is a good man with my eyes. (or rather, I have his..) He is incredibly intelligent, hard working, overly pragmatic and loyal to a fault.  However, he is not a brave man.  Everything I know of the relationship between him and my mother is from the varying stories of those who were there at the time and old enough to recall; stories of perceived unequaled class, questioned loyalties, spectacularly dramatic arguments, heavy drinking, unbridled jealousy, manipulation and complete utter chaos. All of these factors eventually led to my father happily accepting a job transfer and moving out of state to avoid constant confrontations.  He married, had two daughters and built a respectable, slightly more peaceful life.


My life after his departure followed a wildly different and more painful course.  My mother, who used her own physical beauty to systematically destroy herself and those around her, continued to drink bars dry. We moved more than 10 times before I had acquired ten years, crossing multiple school districts in pursuit of her most recent lovers. A prolonged disappearance on her part, resulted in a much too short stay in foster care.  (with the most wonderful foster parents EVER!) I spent my childhood in fear, and went to sleep each night with a bag packed (as only a child can pack) under my bed, praying for the courage to simply leave in the night, to find a place where I finally felt safe. I spent my school days pretending the final bell would never ring, trying desperately to be just like everyone else. One day in particular found me in front of a mirror in the school bathroom, pathetically trying to comb my hair down over a bare spot where my mother, in her anger the previous night, had pulled to hard. At the time, I didn't want to be rescued.. I just wanted to fit in.


As I got older and less meek, my mother quit drinking and 'found God,' thus discovering yet another way to belittle and tear down those around her.  Only this time she had the irrefutable bible to back her up.  There were many mornings I would enter the kitchen to find a detailed note with scripture verses telling me all the ways I had recently sinned and how according to God's word, I would burn in hell. To this day I will not set foot in an evangelical church and happily rebelled by becoming catholic.  As a child, our house was always immaculate. There was no eating in the kitchen, no messing up made beds by actually sitting on them, certain rooms were completely off limits as walking through them would cause the grain of the carpet to go in different directions.  There were never to be empty hangers in the closets and no one EVER took clothing from the ironing pile or got clothes being worn dirty. (I currently have a closet that has daily clothing avalanches.) All of my mothers compulsive obsessions led to my childhood being spent sitting on the floor, losing myself in books while I willed my life to pass into adulthood quicker.

***

My most recent visit to the shelter in Uptown was a difficult one.  As it is currently spring break around the country, the kitchen had fresh faced volunteers from an Oklahoma youth group lending a hand.  I worked the first part of the line filling lunch trays with sausages or hamburgers while two other girls ladled on canned veggies and oranges.  People were increasingly short tempered with us, wanting an extra hamburger or oranges despite knowing that we couldn't comply until everyone had been through the line at least once.  I got shouted at by a deaf woman who has likely spent her life being misunderstood.  And as yet another person complained that their food was burnt, undercooked, overly salty etc.. I felt the overwhelming urge to slam down my tongs while telling everyone to piss off before dramatically stomping out of the kitchen to resume my own peaceful life.  I was jerked out of my impending hissy fit by the voice of a crabby older woman shouting at a young volunteer who had apparently failed to place  oranges on the woman's tray gently enough.  I watched as a red flush crept up the girl's neck and her eyes began to fill.  In her innocent young mind, she was only trying to help and people should be thankful, not angry and mean.   


As the line of hungry people slowed to a trickle, we talked about the importance of trying to empathize with where people are coming from.  We don't know everyone's stories and the difficult roads that have led them each to our particular lunch line.  We can't fathom the tears and disappointments of those we serve and we don't feel how difficult it is for them and their pride to accept a tray, to accept that they can't provide it for themselves.  But in order to serve them, we have to try to understand.  


A few minutes later, little Ashley came through the line. She is a tiny 5 year old with light brown skin, gorgeous curly hair and an impish smile.  Last week before she left the lunchroom, we had woven a flower into her hair.  This week she extended her small hand across the lunch line, gifting me with its contents; a ragged, well loved, hand picked dandelion. I smiled and she skipped happily away.

I do not lament my childhood. My mother has since done her best to make a peace that she can live with and I have grown to be a wife, a friend, a musician and a teacher. I don't blame my father for the past.  In fact, I think he would be horrified to know what my reality had been.  I suspect he thought he was a cause of my mother's issues and that if he left she would finally be happy.  Of course, he was wrong. My father is an occasional presence, though due to fear of a return to former chaos, he and his wife have long declined to tell their two daughters of my existence. They worry that I am as my mother. Their combined decision has caused me to scrutinize everyone I meet. Afterall, everyone has a story, be it dramatic or glamorous, or blissfully mundane. One never knows who one passes by in everyday life. One could be passing the next president, the next great humanitarian, or someone much less grandiose, like one's next door neighbor, or even one's own sister. 

I do not wish to have led a different life. My life, my story, has led me to where I am now and has given me the hunger to fight for myself and for those around me. My history has given me a fantastic perspective and I try to use that to see the hurt and insecurity of a broken home in the eyes of the gang kids on the corner. I do my best to understand the sadness in the faces of those on the other side of the lunch line.  And I draw on my past to see the beauty in the simple gift of a tattered weed.