Your Story-Your Life #2

To journal through any creative art is to note one's own journey and to pay attention to all aspects, all facets of our lives; to learn what books alone could never teach us.

In YSYL #1, I wrote about the life-lessons I learned through the ages of 0-10. Someone recently asked a great question - why start at zero?

Well, who knows what mysteries lie in the deep sub- or pre-conscious self? Not me, but I suspect there's something there. Though it defies language, we sense the emergence of the "I." If spirituality can be defined as a sense of being part of a greater mystery in a confusing world, the "I," or ego, propels us through differently in a manner that's worth observing.

We are a volume unto ourselves. Or as Whitman put it, we contain multitudes.

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My Story: Too Tall For Grace

Writing and Reflection # 2: 

Between ages 10-20, to keep from drowning in details, I'll first offer reflections and lessons of my years between 10-13 and pick up the rest later.

Just prior to the age of ten I hit puberty. Breasts emerged at nine, my period arrived shortly thereafter. Research suggests that young girls thrust into early adult roles tend to develop earlier than most. That was certainly the case for me. By the end of my thirteenth year, two sisters would be added to the family. There makes five girls, and one out-of control boy.

There I was at St. Hubert's School in fourth grade, too tall for grace, the only bra-wearer in a room full of t-shirts under crisp white uniform button-down shirts, toting monthly sanitary supplies in my lunchbox to a class headed by a nun that expected us to do bathroom duty only between classes.

I recall sitting through long days squirming in discomfort, a sanitary garter belt stuck up my behind. I was the oddball prematurely rolling over the line between child- and adulthood.

Still, I had friends. I recall the birthday of my 11th year. My nice friends, all of whom I would soon leave behind when I went to public school, brought little girl things as gifts to a little party at our house. Later, I asked my mother why I received gifts like plastic high heels and doll clothes, and she said, "The mothers don't know you're different."

Going from chunky to considerably larger from 10-13 afforded me a degree of natural protection from being too sexualized then despite male attention directed to my large breasts. My height and weight made me grotesque to the considerably smaller people around me, though when I look at the few photos of the time, I just see a tall, fairly large, incredibly awkward-seeming girl.

All this meant I could not wear age-appropriate clothes among my pre- and early teen peers. Not that we could have afforded them, but still.

Back then were the times of uber-thinness and model-fashionista Twiggy as the ideal woman. Wearing my grandma's hand-me-downs probably didn't help me on the fashion front. Thick glasses, frizzy hair and many pimples rounded out my look. I used to sleep with my face plastered with the Clearasil pads I bought with babysitting money. I literally began to burn my face off with benzoyl peroxide, only making things worse. Cruel classmates bullied me; my hallway nickname was "Twiggy." On the rare mornings my father was home, he'd greet me: "Gee you're getting fat. What happened to your face?"

I don't recall any real friendships in 7th or 8th grade. No one cared to be associated with me. Still, life taught me a few lessons between the age of 10-13:

--I learned that bribes could be useful. I had to bring gum every day to Mr. Beckmann's class to keep the boys from bullying me. That kept them chewing and quiet.

--I learned that a teacher could save your mental health if s/he made you feel worthy. Mr. Beckmann, I forgot the class you taught, but I never forgot the day I arrived at your class early to beat the bullies and you looked up from your desk and said: "Linda! How's my girl today?" Today, you might get in trouble for such a personal comment, but at that moment, I felt worthy and seen.

--I learned how surprisingly abrupt life can be in ways that can never be fixed. My Grandpa Baillie died rather suddenly when I was thirteen. My last memory of seeing him alive was when he made a surprise visit to our house mid- day to check rumors that we kids were under the influence of a mom who drank too much. He knew already that Dad, his son, suffered from the same character constraints that had affected his own life: he drank, he womanized, he didn't want to be home with the wife and kids.

I can still see Grandpa as he was then, holding my baby sister Joan on his knee, looking sad. Yes. Mom was under the weather that day. I know he was sad for us as he left that day. Perhaps he was also in pain. Two months later, he was dead of advanced liver cancer.

--I learned I had the power to scare my father. I had a fever and hallucinations one night shortly after we buried Grandpa. Dad came in about 2 a.m. and heard me talking to his deceased father. I don't know if my father was sober or not. I told Dad I was sorry he woke me up because Grandpa had arrived in a dream to tell me he loved me. Dad asked what else had happened in the dream. "Grandpa held his hand out to me and there was circle on it," I told him, puzzled.

Later I learned Grandpa had been buried with my grandmother's wedding ring between his palms, and that this decision had been made spontaneously before the casket was closed. Only my dad, his brother and my grandmother knew.

The next morning my mother told me I had scared my father. After this, my father had less to do with me than ever. 

--I learned dreams can foretell events sometimes. One Sunday early morning in that special time between asleep and awake, I dreamed that Grandpa Stanley, my mother's father, had died. I woke up relieved that it was only a bad dream, reasoning that since other Grandpa recently died, I was reliving my grief. I went into the kitchen to get some juice before going to Mass by myself. Within a few minutes the phone rang, and Mom got the news about her father's sudden fatal heart attack.

In the years after that, Mom would ask from time to time if I thought I was psychic, without sharing any thoughts about what her question, or my answer, meant to her. I told her no. I had read an Edgar Cayce book I'd found at my maternal Grandma's house by then, and by those standards, I knew I was not.

In retrospect I would say there are times when each of us might be hooked into a different level of being, aside from the obvious. It's possible more children than adults are able to jump the streams separating the worlds, but who knows? I think each of us has many more levels of perception than we can ever name. What's unusual is that we rarely discuss such things, for fear of being treated as some strange "other."

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Do you remember anything about your pre- or earliest teen years? If so, write it out if you can, or draw a picture, or make a recording. There's always lots happening at the ground level of the soul at our early transitional times, the tender seeds of which sometimes get overrun due to harsh conditions. If there were happy times—note, and cherish them.