Stories-ONE: In the beginning…

I was at the tender age of three and a half when I have my earliest memory.  I was sitting in front of a long narrow window in our house tucked away behind a sheer white curtain.  I was sitting and building with my Lego’s and feeling the warmth of the sun on my then pale freckle-less face.  We lived in Singapore and even though I did not realize it at the time, we had it good.  I remember being measured for tailored dresses and the grocery boy coming by to get my beautiful mothers’ grocery list.  As clear as if it was yesterday, I recall going to the market and being in total awe of all the items.  The mops and straw brooms, decorations hanging all over the ceiling just waiting to be purchased from an interested buyer.  These were good times.  After a year we moved back to the States so I could attend school in the U.S. 

 

At the age of five, my life changed drastically.  I started school and my Mom and Dad tried to reconcile after 2 years of being divorced.  One uncomfortable afternoon, while living in the square white house that my Aunt Evon owned on Patterson Road, something bad happened and not only that, something deadly could have happened.  My Mom and Dad got into an argument and as this disagreement grew and brewed itself, it became very ugly.  Screaming, yelling and slamming were vibrating that entire kitchen.  What exactly was said was hard to distinguish but I do know that words were invented and God was damned a number of times.  Reaching into the knife drawer my enraged father was going to get a knife so that he could teach my Mom a lesson.  My Mom reacting as quickly as anyone would and could slamming the drawer on his hand as hard and fast as she could.  My seventeen year old sister and I stood in the entry way of that big country kitchen; we were wide-eyed and scared to death.  My father wrenched his neck around and looked me square in the eye and said “Elizabeth get me my gun, I am going to kill your Mother.”  I stuttered and spoke in a low and empty little voice, “I don’t know where it is.”  My eyes were darting back and forth between my Father and the corner near where I stood.  The corner where my Fathers’ shot gun was propped up in.  My Mom released the drawer from my Fathers hand and said with urgency, “Girls get in the pick-up.”  My sister and I ran as fast as we could to the little avocado green pick up and slammed the door as my Mom turned the ignition and with warp speed we drove over the grass, off the curb and on down the road.

 

That day was pivotal.  I knew then what exactly my Father was made of.  He was made of rotten horse shit. A hate burned so deep in my soul for that man, things were never the same between me and him again.  It was the first recollection of heart break and the first time I ran from anyone, yet at age five years old, I was running for my life from a man that I was suppose to trust as my protector.  I would have liked to say that this was the point in which my Mother never looked back, but she did look back and go back several times during my childhood.  As an adult I would have liked to say that I did not repeat this pattern of running away, but unfortunately I did…three times over.

 

One would think that if they could just define that moment when things went sour they could just fix it or just move on…but life is funny, and by funny I mean a relentless cycle of craziness that well, either you learn to laugh, to cry, to fight or to run.  For me I have consequently learned to do all of these things, and to chew gum at the same time.