Childhood stories

When I was about 9 or 10, I lived in a small town in New Hampshire. It was one of those places where no one locked their doors, the car keys were left in the ignition, and pretty much everyone trusted everyone else.

I had a couple of pals, (who are still living, so I won't use their names) that I hung around with after school. And we used to go to a small store that served ice cream sodas, coffee, hamburgers and also had all the elements of a small town "drug store."

The owner, Mike, has made his transition and he was one of the kindest men. He was always doing nice things for others, and I never knew what his religion was.

My pals, in their misguided desire for getting something they wanted, asked me to join them in what turned out to be a lawless afternoon and caused me to be put in jail - for a few hours. They, however, escaped, and I never snitched on them, knowing early on that that alone could make my life miserable forever onward.

The plan was that I would distract Mike, by talking to him, while the other three went to the candy bar section and helped themselves. My reward would be that I could have some of the 'take.'

Ten year olds are so sure they know how the world works, and in discussing the plan I am sure we all thought Mike would be deceived by my blather. He wasn't, and he grabbed my arm, held me in place and yelled to the others to stop. They took off running. I am sure he knew who they were.

As he held on to my arm, he told his wife to call the police.

I about fainted.

And soon Chief Picard showed up in his uniform, gun on his hip, baton on the other side, all his buttons and badge glistening through the tears in my eyes.

Mike let go of me and after telling him what had happened, Chief put handcuffs on one hand and led me out of the store.

We had to cross the main intersection to get to City Hall and to the jail. I was so humiliated that anyone might see me, my head was very low. I wished to be invisible.

No words were spoken until we arrived at the jail. I was ushered in to a small cell and Chief said he was going to call my mother. I would be waiting inside the bars until she came.

It stank in there. And I cried and cried at what had happened.

I could hear the Chief calling my mother. I knew she would be coming downtown, but however long it was going to take, it felt like forever. Then he came back into the jail area and asked me some questions (this could never happen today, could it, questioning a minor without an adult guardian present?) about who else was there with me, what was I doing, etc.

He knew I had not done this dastardly act alone. He knew I was part of a 'gang.' And my just talking to Mike was not in itself a crime, but I was an 'accomplice' to the theft, because those other girls did get away with some candy - worth about 30 cents back then.

My mother did show up and I was released to her but the net effect of this overwhelming experience was that for years, literally, I could not go into Mike's store. I was so ashamed of my performance and treatment of this nice man that I could not even face him.

Perhaps it was an act that was precipitated by my parents' discord (a divorce was looming), but when I was about 16, I was with my father on a Sunday in October and he wanted to stop in and get something at Mike's and he asked me to come in and have something to eat with him. I sat in the car and told him the whole story, which he apparently never knew, and he then insisted I come in with him and talk to Mike.

We went in and sat in a back booth and I wept as I apologized to Mike for what had been my only criminal undertaking and as he took my hands in his big ones, he forgave me. He said to me, with tears in his eyes, "You have deprived me of your presence by staying away. You have punished yourself and me by not sharing this burden. Please accept my apology for allowing you to be treated as a criminal when you clearly were not."

Then he told me the story of Yom Kippur and how it is a day when all your sins are forgiven, when a person can be purified, and how in his religion he could 'start over' and essentially have a clean slate.

I really liked that concept and it felt good to have him absolve me, to verbally wash me clean.

The net effect of this event was probably a good thing in that I have never stolen anything from anyone. For years I could not even go into a store and walk out without buying something and not feel as if I was being watched. My anxiety about being 'good' was constantly present.

When my own daughter was caught stuffing candy into her pants as we were waiting in a checkout line in Ketchum, Idaho, I took appropriate action... she was forced to go and speak to the owner of the store right then and there and to hear from him how stealing affected his business.

In reflection all these decades later, I think putting a ten-year old in cuffs and hauling her off to a smelly jail was a little over the top. I think the humiliation effect was enormous and not necessarily beneficial.

But I have forgiven Mike and the Chief and my mother and even my best friend and the others for the culmination of events that brought me to that moment. And I have remembered the feelings of being absolved and have returned that to those who asked for it from me.

I know there were other things I did as an adult of which I am not proud, mistakes I made in parenting and in relationships, things I wished later I could change. I tried hard to be good enough and fell short enough to keep me humble.

In many religions there are ways to receive absolution, a cleansing of the soul. If thoughts are 'things' that never go away, then I choose to convert this earlier thought of humiliation into a glorious flower of growth, to give it as a gift to parents who have children needing guidance to not 'overdo' the correction, to offer it up as a way to review all of life's path events, and to cleanse it totally as Mike so graciously did for me decades ago.

Spring is a time for renewal...

Canceling a Membership

Most of us are members of clubs, organizations, groups or fraternities, sororities. Some of those memberships serve us well and some are just verbal clutter in the background of our lives.

I have become aware of being a member of a club that no longer serves me, so I'm withdrawing my membership today, here and now.

That club is the "Clean Plate Club."

I was joined against my will when I was too small and vulnerable to object.

My father and mother didn't realize what that club had for rules when they ordered me to "clean up my plate," and they have cast off their mortal coils and any rules they issued are null and void now.

One of the philosophies of the club was that children starving in Hungary, Armenia (Does that place still exist?), Africa and other remote places unlikely to be visited by a five-year old from New Hampshire, would directly benefit from my consuming everything on a dinner plate for an adult.

Cruel and unusual punishment? It was never deemed so by the grown-ups, for whom a full plate was an affirmation that the war was over, there was now plenty for all, so celebrate and EAT UP!

Questioning a Leo father as to how my eating all my food could possibly help someone so far away was deemed insubordination.

So was refusing to eat something that either looked or tasted peculiar to a five-year old. But Taurus stubbornness is hardly a match for Leo's pride. Or was it?

One Friday evening my mother and father were about to sit down for a French 'apéritif.' consisting of fresh, bright red sliced tomatoes (pronounced toh-mah-toes for this occasion) and sliced hard-boiled eggs with a light vinaigrette sauce and some freshly cut up parsley. (This prepared by my mother when she was still interested enough in furthering her relationship with my father; not to say that there is any blame her in any direction, but at some point, they both did things to each other that caused her to stop making an effort with food for him.)

This lovely plate was put on the coffee table in the living room, and I wandered over to see what it was. Expressing an interest in tasting it, my father insisted that I have three slices of toh-mah-toe and three slices of egg on my own plate and that I sit down and eat it.

The re-created French aperitif plate which launched the
War of the Toh-mah-toes of circa 1950's.

Never realizing that this would become the War of the Toh-mat-toes in the early 1950's, the battle was joined. Of course I sat down, and upon taking one bite decided that was enough. The red thing, years later, might hold some small appeal, but my youthful palate thought it was disgusting. And those delightful hard-boiled eggs were sullied with a nasty-tasting bitter juice.

"Yeuchhhhhh!" I called out, and my father and mother's evening was about to be ruined. Putting my fork back on the plate, I got up and started to leave.

This was the affront that the Leo was not about to tolerate.

"Young Lady, sit back down and finish what is on your plate." Taurus feet (mine) were firmly planted in the negative, and arms crossed against my chest, I refused.

Prison was a better alternative, and that was where I was sent.  "Go to your room and you will stay there until you decide you are going to finish what is on the plate," my father ordered.

Dinner time came and went, and my father directed my mother to bring that very same plate out for my breakfast on Saturday morning. As he was going fishing with my older brother, he wasn't around to watch the tears and refusal that ensued. Back to my room I went without any breakfast.

Act II, scene 1: lunch was a repeat performance. By now the eggs had absorbed all the sauce and some of the tomato juice as well, giving them a peculiar color and an even nastier taste. My mother was looking at it with the same disgust but for some reason she was in cahoots with the jailer and was following his orders.

Act II, scene 2: Being in my room all day wasn't healthy, either, so I was let out mid-afternoon and I knew right where to go to find nourishment... the raspberries were in season and off I went to the patch.

Act II, scene 3: Everyone else at dinner was served from the variety of fresh things on the table, but I was subjected to a cold plate of withered up Toh-mah-toes and soggy hard-boiled eggs and an equally withering look from my father, ordering me to eat what was on my plate or go to my room.

It wasn't hard for me to decide what to do and I left the table. As I was going up the stairs, I could hear my mother arguing with my father that his intractable daughter was not going to bend to his pride and it should end now.

It did... but in a secret way: when the dishes were cleared from the table, those wicked no-longer red things went into the trash. I expect even Super-Pig (a creature we had out in the back) might have turned up his nose to them, but I don't know that for a fact.

Years, really almost 20 of them, went by and one evening when my father had invited me out to dinner, I told him this story. He was astounded that he could have behaved in such a way, and worse yet, his common phrase at dinner "Have some lovely toh-mah-toes," had become a trigger point for me to NEVER want to eat those garden vegetables in their fresh form again.

Curiously, talking about it with him, receiving his apology as well, was the curative, the forgiveness, that made it possible for me to eat them, but only if I put them on my plate myself. From then on, whenever we were at a table together, he would lightly say, "Won't you have some lovely toh-mah-toes, dear?" and we would smile at what was now part of our bond instead of our fence.

Silly that decades later I am still dealing with food issues and the consequent weight that accompanies them. But I am working on a variety of solutions and one of them is to cancel my membership in the Clean Plate Club. Now I can leave something behind without guilt. Or better yet, by making donations to food programs that allow that guilt to be assuaged, knowing that someone somewhere locally or far away is getting something to eat and I don't have to eat it for them.

And, although I re-created this dish for this blog, I don't much care for the combination today. But I do have my mother to thank for giving me the incentive to be creative about food and its presentation. Whatever complications my parents had between them, there is much good that each of them passed on to me and with some distance from the immediacy of their energies I can see that now.

What contracts have been made in your life, with or without your assent, that are playing out in the background of your life? Do you want to share?

And, to my children, who might be reading this... my profuse apologies for anything I may have said or done that created any contract that is negative in your life. Consider this the dissolution of it for my part in it.

February is National Heart Month in the USA

Already the valentines are flooding the card sections, Colombia is hopeful that the annual demand for flowers for lovers will help balance out the export column for the country, and I am sighing my annual sigh of angst for the flowers or cards that don't grace my door. In Colombia, it is in mid-September that "Special Friends or Lover's Day" occurs, so February there is simply a month to recuperate from Christmas and New Year's celebrations and to embrace the quiet because there are no long weekends with tourists.

But in the U.S. it is everywhere - movies, TV, internet, magazines, newspapers - and in schools across the land there are going to be little boys or little girls who, for one reason or another, don't get what they are expecting or hoping for on Feb. 14th and it will, I promise you, leave a lasting memory of what disappointment is all about.

I am personally against doing the card-exchange in schools. It is a chance for the bullies to work their particular kind of wretched behavior on those they have already targeted for abuse, and it is that kind of torture that young children do not need to experience.

Who really benefits from these so-called expressions of love? And why do the schools perpetuate something that does not really teach the students what love is?

John Gardner, Stanford '33 and MA '36 wrote an essay for the Stanford Alumni Magazine in March 1994 entitled 'The Road to Self-Renewal' and if you want to read it in its entirety, here is the link. He wrote, "We build our own prisons and serve as our own jail keepers, but I've concluded that our parents and the society at large have a hand in building our prisons."

His premise is that the roles that get created for us by parents, teachers, our peers and yes, even the bullies, can stick with us for a lifetime until or unless we as individuals take on the task of self-renewal, dealing with the ghosts of the past; failures, traumas, grievances and resentments. These injuries, imagined or real, take their toll both in limitations and frustrations sometimes causing illnesses that further limit us.

Gardner adds, "Life is an endless unfolding and, if we wish it to be, an endless process of self-discovery."

Hearts by Danilo Rizzuti

In this month of February, the U.S.'s national focus on the heart, I hope my readers far and wide will take the time to think about what love really is, and how we are all responsible for our own lives. In the Episcopalian Order of Service, there is a prayer that serves as a reminder to me that I am not perfect, never will be, but I seek His forgiveness and try again to forgive those who have caused me pain.

"Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone." But most especially I have 'sinned' against myself in not letting go of those past ghosts allowing me to be more loving, more giving, more of who I am supposed to be. Forgiveness is not really for the other(s), but for me, so that I am free.

The message of Jesus Christ was "Forgive them for they know not what they do." For me He is the icon of true and untrammeled Love and without pushing my beliefs on those who have their own, many of the religious sects have in their concepts an image or icon that represents the energy of Love.

I hope these words fall on fertile ground for you to renew your contract of living and loving and find your way to forgiveness of Self and that you can celebrate this month of the heart with great joy and love!