Two Fathers Reached through a Veil of Darkness and brought Light to their Daughters

If you think this is black magic or a joke, then I ask you to pass on reading this post, because this one is not for you.  Last night I had the privilege of being at a small gathering, over which, Psychic Medium, Josephine Ghiringhelli, presided.  It was held at a friend's house, Leeann, who I've only recently come to know.  Leeann invited me to come to a group reading after someone had dropped out.  She had just read my post, "Secondary Infertility"(posted 9/16/14) but it was before I had written the post, "An Old Wish Granted"(posted 9/17/14) in which I talk about a previous reading that I had with Josephine.   Leeann was the only person at the gathering that I knew or who knew me. I had first sat on one couch, but left to go to another room.  When I returned, someone was sitting in my seat, so I took another seat on a chair.  When Josephine arrived, she said that some of the chairs were "too close" to her, so we rearranged chairs and I moved to sit on the end of another couch. Josephine asked for the lights in the room to be shut off and by candlelight she began.  She asked us to uncross our legs and arms, to hold our hands, palm up, and to close our eyes.  She said to think about a memory with the person we wanted to connect with and to invite them to come into our presence.  As I sat there, with my eyes closed, I thought about when my father and I would sit and sing songs from his Mitch Miller albums and I thought about his beautiful voice.  Then a smile spread wide across my face, because I could actually feel his hands in open hands.  It wasn't a physical presence, it was more like the energy that I knew was him. I know that there are disbelievers out there, so really, if you want to doubt this, this story is not for you.  In my heart, I know that last night I held my father's hands in mine for the first time since his death in 1979.

On Josephine's command, we opened our eyes.  I already knew that my father was there, I didn't need her to tell me.  I do not say that I am a psychic medium, but I have come to believe that I am an intuitive.  I can feel other people, I feel their pain and their sorrow and, if they are open to it, I reach out to them to help heal their pain.  I am not a healer, I have no magic powers, I am just somone who is interested in easing pain in this world.  The room was full of sorrow last night and I knew there were others who needed to speak to their loved ones much more than I did.  So I was willing to sit back and let them connect.  First Josephine asked to address the person who's house we were in.  She told Leeann that her house had a good energy and then  proceeded to connect Leeann to her loved ones.  Immediately after reading Leeann, Josephine approached me and the woman seated next to me.  As she looked at us she said she had "twins" here. She mentioned "Gemini," the twins.   I thought about my cousin Peter's twins, because in 2008 when Josephine read me in a room full of about eighty people, she had mentioned them then too.  But I thought it was too much of a stretch with no other information, so I said nothing.  Then she mentioned that the month June would have meaning as a birthday or an anniversary for the person this was meant for.  I thought of my parents' anniversary, June 6th (the same date that had come through the last time I had seen Josephine).  But the woman sitting next to me said it was for her.  Josephine brought through the woman's father and the connection seemed right.  Then Josephine said, "Who is Theresa?  Tom?  Will?" All three she said together without a beat between them. I raised my hand and said, "I am Theresa, my brother is Tom, and Will is my cousin's son who died crossing the highway and he is the young man who brought my father through to me the last time I saw you."  (Again, refer to "An Old Wish Granted 9/17/14 for more information.)  Will is a very strong spirit on the other side and he takes every chance he gets to connect.  I hope his father, my cousin, reads this.  He really wants you to know that he is okay.

Josephine said that both my father and the father of the woman sitting next to me were coming through together.  She again mentioned "twins" and "Gemini" but it didn't mean anything to either of us. Still, I mentioned that Will's Uncle had twin boys, just in case that was it.  Readings are sort of like a quarter-back throwing a pass to someone.  Sometimes the pass is completed and the receiver runs with it.  Sometimes the receiver fumbles and loses it.  Sometimes it is intercepted by someone else who thinks it's for them.  A lot depends on the receiver and if they are remembering clearly or if they are understanding what is being asked of them.  But there are other times, when the receiver simply isn't aware of the connection, and that is what was happening here.

Josephine told me that my father was with me.  She said that he was sending me "musical notes."  I told her that my father had a beautiful voice and that I had been thinking about the times when we would sing together to his Mitch Miller albums.  The woman next to me said that her father also sang and that he too had a beautiful voice.  Josephine asked the name of the woman who was sitting next to me and the woman replied, "Carol." Carol was recording the reading and later she told me that she would send me a CD of it, perhaps there was more that my father said that I can't remember at this moment.  If so, I will update you when I receive the recording.  But soon Josephine left us and proceeded to "read" the other women in the room.  After about an hour and a half, she was about to leave.  I couldn't let her leave without asking her one questions and she agreed to hear it.  I asked, "Will my writing be successful?"  She said, "You are writing books.  I see a book over your head.  Yes, it will be successful."

With that, Josephine left the room and the house.  The rest of us started to talk to each other about what had happened and what she had told us.  For example, about one woman who's mother had hidden a jewelry box before her passing and about another woman who's husband had left her three notes guiding her to the hiding places of some money he had left for her.  Carol and I started to talk about how our fathers had come through together.  I don't know what made her ask, but she asked me, "How old are you?"  I said, "My birthday is in October and I will be 56."  She looked surprised and said, "My birthday is in October and I will also be 56."  Goosebumps ran up and down my arms. Realizing the slim chance that this meant something, I offered, "My birthday is October 20th."  She replied in a stunned voice, "My birthday is October 20th." . . . We were the twins.  Our fathers came through and they told us that we were twins.  Two strangers, who after moving seats several times ended up sitting next to each other by chance.  We could easily have left that house and never have found out that we shared a birthday.  But through our fathers' will to make sure that we understood that it was truly them who had come through together, we discovered this amazing fact before parting.  After this, we shared more about each other's lives and started a friendship that I hope will continue.  Before we left, we hugged each other.  Two women, so recently strangers, now bound together by the love of our fathers.  Was this a coincidence?  I think not.

Blazing New Trails

I walk through our mountain house that hides from the rest of the world that lies beyond the woods.  I stop as I enter the living room.  I can see my four-year old son sitting on the floor.  His castle is before him.  Some of his men are laid out around the carpet, while others balance precariously on plastic turrets.  In his imagination, a battle is going on between good and evil and I am about to trounce upon it and disturb his carefully planned strategies.  Gingerly, I take another step.  But the room and floor are empty.  The image that was so real to me, was just a shadow from long ago. 

In the kitchen my husband is at the stove making breakfast.  The table is partially set with orange juice, butter, and mugs for our morning tea.  He is warming the plates in the oven while he toasts the bread and scrambles the eggs.  I hear my nine-year old daughter just outside of the kitchen window. She is sitting at the picnic table with her water-colors and paintbrushes.  She’s painting the mountain that rises in the distance beyond the dirt road.  She's chattering and telling me about the sounds she can hear in the woods and the animals she is sure are hiding just behind the tree-line.  I almost reply, but then notice that all is silent except for the movements of my husband at the kitchen stove.  Once again, it was just an echo of long ago.  

Later, my husband and I climb the long rocky path toward the waterfall, high in the Catskill Mountains. Several storms, over the past couple of years, have ravaged the path and it now resembles a dry riverbed more than a mountain trail.  This makes the hiking difficult.  My husband stops me and ties my hiking boots tighter so that I won't twist an ankle.  We walk on and I see that autumn has come to the mountain.  There are leaves of red and gold covering the ground.  For a moment, I can hear our ten-year old son and fifteen-year old daughter just behind us as they search for snakes, frogs, and salamanders.  I turn to check on them, but the path behind me is empty.  

My husband says he wants to check on his old hunting spot and so I follow him as he blazes a new trail and we leave the old path behind.  We come to a fallen tree and he puts his pack down and starts to walk on without it.  I sit on the tree to rest and say, "I'll wait here."  He looks at me and knows he will be going beyond my field of vision.  He says, "No, we stick together."  So I stand up and follow him further into the woods.  Super-storm Sandy came through a couple of years ago and stately old trees had been toppled like dominoes.  After some searching, he finds his old spot and I watch him as he clears the ground below his perch.  As I wait, there's a fly that keeps trying to fly into my mouth, so I recite, "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.  I don't know why she swallowed a fly, perhaps she'll die."  And I go on, through the whole poem, as my husband keeps working.  I start singing other camp songs until I come to one that I can't quite remember.  I turn to ask my daughter how the song goes, I always depended on her to remember the words to it.  But the woods are silent around me.  

We continue our walk back to the path and climb further and further until we can hear the waterfall. We rest on the rocks in this cool and peaceful oasis.  The water is low, it had been a dry summer, but that does not diminish the beauty of this place.  We reminisce about when we would come here with our first dog, Duke, and our children, when they were little.  In more recent years, we came with our dog, Daisy, and our teenagers.  Now we come alone.  Daisy is back at the house, she isn't able to make the climb anymore and the children are off, building their futures.  One is with his college friends, kayaking on the Hudson River, while the other is enjoying "museum day" in New Orleans where all museums are free for the day.  My husband and I prepare to retrace our steps on the trail, at least it's down-hill from here.  An hour later we reach the base of the trail and see a young couple just starting to climb.  They are holding hands as they walk.  I smile and say to them, "It's a long road from here."  They smile back at me and I can see that they aren't concerned about the road ahead of them.  I stop for a moment and watch them walk on, remembering that it was not so long ago that we were them.  

Finally, we reach our mountain home and lift our heavy feet to climb the deck stairs.  My husband opens the door to the house and Daisy comes bounding out. She licks me in her excitement to see that I have returned.  We settle on deck chairs and listen to the quiet sounds of the woods.   I look toward the mountain that my daughter had painted long ago, the same one that we've just climbed.  I reach my hand out toward my husband and he takes hold of it in his.  

The Bells Tolled: The True Story of my Great-Grandmother Filomena & Epilogue

In a tiny Italian village south of Salerno, Filomena was known for her beauty.  Her family was of high social standing so her community and parents had expected her to marry well.  But the young girl fell in love, and love is not always the best judge of character.  Although strikingly handsome, Francesco was from a more dubious family.  It was well known that his father, Benedetto, had been a notorious man who had left a legacy of fear in the hearts of the villagers.  Benedetto had been the "strong-arm" for the local Baron and had been hired, to "eliminate" any obstacle or person who stood in the Baron's way.  Although Filomena was well aware of Francesco's family, she chose to elope with him against the wishes of her parents.  The townsfolk whispered behind her back, "Silly Filomena, this will not end well."

In the fall of 1895, Filomena gave birth to their first son.  Although it was tradition to name the first born son after the paternal grandfather, Benedetto's name was infamous, so the young couple decided instead to name him Angelo.  Perhaps this was simply because Angelo was Benedetto's father's name, or perhaps the young parents thought that such and angelic name would offer him more protection from the evils of the world.  But as young Angelo was left clinging to his mother's breast in Italy, Francesco decided to strike out for a new start in America.  He traveled across an ocean, leaving his family behind.  He found work on the railroads in the northeast and saved as much as he could.  As the years went by, he wrote to his wife and asked after their son who was growing into a strong boy. Finally, Francesco returned to Italy, if only for a short while.  In 1905, Filomena gave birth to their second son, Antonio.  Francesco was now the proud papa of two strong sons.  Renewed with a desire to bring his family to America, he left them once again.

Filomena had been married to Francesco for over a dozen years, but they had only spent a few of those years together.  When he left, this second time, she was left in despair.  As the lonely months and the years passed once again, Filomena found comfort in the arms of another man.  The villagers whispered again, "Silly Filomena, this will not end well."

In 1908 Francesco returned to his family for a second time.  But this time, much to his surprise, he found his wife expecting another child.  This infuriated him!  She had caused a scandal with her unfaithful behavior while he had been working hard to give his family a better life in a new world.  A world where people did not know of the legacy that had been left to him and his sons by his own father, Benedetto.  In his anger, Francesco beat his wife until her spleen exploded.  When Filomena died, the villagers gathered at her funeral.  And as the church bells tolled, they whispered, "Silly Filomena, you brought this on yourself."

Epilogue:

A year later, Francesco met another village girl named Pasqualina who was living with her widowed brother and his children.  Every day, she would come down to the stream to wash their clothes. Francesco would meet her there as he did the same for his children.  But longing to return to America again and unable to leave his two young sons behind all alone, it wasn't long before he offered Pasqualina a proposal.  The two were married quickly and in 1910, they gave birth to their first son, Luigi.  Now, with a new wife and a new son, Francesco once again left for the promise of America. In early 1912, he sent for his sixteen year old son Angelo and his twenty year old nephew, Francesco, to join him in New York.  But when Angelo debarked from the ship that had taken him to this new land of streets paved in gold, this new land that his father had left him for, this new land that had caused the circumstances under which his father had beaten his mother to death before his very eyes, he was greeted by boys throwing rocks at him saying, "Go home, Dago!"

A year or so later, Angelo's father, Francesco, was injured while working on the railroad.  His thighbone was crushed.  Unable to work with this injury, Francesco left his son and nephew in America and returned to Italy a bitter man.  He lived out his days, with his wife, Pasqualina, and many more sons and finally a daughter.

When Angelo married and had a family of his own, he never told his children about his father or his grandfather.  When Angelo's first daughter was born, he had named her Filomena, after his mother. His daughter, Filomena, later married and had a family of her own.  Her fourth child was born in 1958, a girl she named Theresa.  Angelo was proud to be able to make his granddaughter laugh as he enjoyed bouncing her on his knee.  But they were destined to only share a short time together in this life.  When Theresa was ten months old, her grandfather, Angelo, passed away.  And with his passing, the tenuous ties to Italy disappeared.

Thirty-four years later, Theresa decided to research her family tree.  In 1993 she called Carmela, the daughter of her grandfather's cousin, Francesco, who had come to America with him.  Carmela, wrote to her cousins in Italy.  One cousin responded with a list of names and address of Theresa's living relatives.  One was her grandfather, Angelo's, half-brother, Luigi, who had only been two years old when his brother left for America in 1912.  She knew nothing about her grandfather's family, but she had a photo that her mother, Filomena, had given her.  She was told that it was of her great-grandfather, Francesco, and his second wife. So when she wrote to Luigi in English, she also sent a copy of the photo, for an image does not need translation.  She received a response in English saying that he hadn't seen that photo in over fifty years.  Francesco was in his eighties when the photo had been taken and he must have sent to his son, Angelo, in America.  Luigi told her that Francesco had died in 1951 of old age.  After their father's death, he had never heard from Angelo again.  Now, after fifty years, Luigi was hearing from America for the first time.

                                        (Francesco and Pasqualina, c. 1948)


Theresa and Luigi sent many letters to each other over the next years, until Luigi's death in 2003.  In one of the letters, she discovered that the person translating the letters for Luigi, was his son, Francesco.  In 2010, Theresa and her husband finally visited Francesco in Italy.  He introduced her to his sisters and their families.  He even took her to meet his cousin, the son of Antonio, the only full brother of her grandfather, Angelo.  Antonio had passed away in the early 1990's, but his son, also named Francesco, lived down the street from the house where her great-grandfather and his second wife had lived.  The two cousins brought Theresa to the old stone house that had been the backdrop for the only picture she had of  her great-grandfather.  But when she asked what had happened to her great-grandmother, Filomena, just as she had asked in her letters, no one would give her a satisfying answer.

In 2013, Francesco came to visit Theresa in America.  At the end of his visit, just before he was about to leave, he asked her, "Do you want to know the truth about your great-great-grandfather, Benedetto?" Of course she said, "yes" and he then related the story of his notorious reputation.  Then Francesco said, "There's more.  Do you want to know the truth about how your great-grandmother, Filomena, died?"  Of course, she said, "yes" and he told her that story too.  Stories that had been buried long ago, stories that her own grandfather had wanted to keep from her.  Since then there are times when she can't help but imagine, with great sadness, what her grandfather went through at the age of about twelve when he no doubt, watched as his father beat his mother to death.

By all accounts, her grandfather, Angelo, was a kind, gentle, loving family man.  He had wanted to shield his family from the truth.  His granddaughter, Theresa, hadn't known what she would find when she went digging for family stories.  The lesson learned:  When doing genealogical research, sometimes, you unearth more than you were looking for.

(Francesco, son of Luigi, and Theresa, granddaughter of Angelo, together in Little Italy, NYC, one hundred years after their family was separated by an ocean.)

People are Multi-Dimensional

How well do you think you know the people in your life?  Did you ever meet someone and have one opinion about them, and then find out that they are seen as a completely different person by someone else?  Perhaps it depends on the circumstances under which we meet them.  Was it a comfortable situation for them or not?  Was it in a large group or a one-on-one meeting?  Was it social or business related?  Did we meet them in a environment where everyone was meeting for the first time or were they being introduced to a group whom already knew each other well?  Each individual person has many sides to them.  Some may have more sides than others, and we can argue that with the more sides a person has, the more interesting they are.  But does more interesting equal more complicated, more difficult, more challenging?  If we know a person at one point in our lives and then meet them again many years later, are we meeting the same person?

We have depth, we have many sides, we are contradictory, we are many in one.  We are one thing to one person and another thing to others. Our truth depends on who is telling the story and when it is being told.  Perspective, once again, is everything.  Can you decide to be someone else for a moment, for a year, for the rest of your life?  Can people really start over with a "clean slate"?  Can people change or is it only circumstances that change?   Ah, my mind . . . I think too much . . . maybe that is why I blog.  So who are you . . . really, do you know?  Do you think you know me?

An Old Wish Granted (the final chapter, a continuation of The Power of a Grandfather's Love)

There were about 80 to 100 people in the room.  Josephine Ghiringhelli had barely introduced herself  when she approached my table and said, "I'm coming over here."  

I wrote an account of the reading that night (I have included excerpts from an e-mail that I wrote to my cousin, following the event.  The excerpts are in a smaller font so that you can tell the difference from what I am writing now, compared to what I had written then.)  Here it is:

"The psychic said that she was looking for someone who knew a "Michael" and that this went along with a young man who died suddenly involving a car.  Also the date June 6th was a birthday or anniversary that I should know if it was for me.  My father and mother's anniversary was June 6th.  In addition, she said that there were "twins" connected to Michael and the young man."  

My father, Tony, had a brother named Paul, who was still alive at that time.  Paul had a son named Michael.  He also had a son named Peter and Peter was the father of twins.  My cousin, Michael, had a son, Will, who had died after being hit by a car while walking across the highway at night.  Michael had had to make the difficult decision to take his son off of life support when it was determined that his son was brain dead.  

"I said that Michael's brother Peter has twins.  And told her the story of William's death and she said that William and my father were with me.  Then she said that she keeps getting the message, "time, time, time."  

Hearing that message was like having an electrical shock sent through my system. In the crowded room, with every one watching me, I pulled my hands out from under the table.  I showed everyone that I was holding my father's watch.  I had recently asked my mother if I could have something that belonged to my father. She offered me either his watch or his old thick glass contact lenses he used while playing football in the 1930's.  I took the watch.  I wonder what he would have said if I had taken his old contact lenses?  The crowded room all exhaled in unison, making a collective sound of disbelief.

"I said, I'm holding my father's watch in my hand and it's the only thing I have from him.  She said that he is always near me and that I am my "father's daughter."  Meaning that I am a lot like him.  

My daughter was sitting next to me and I knew that this was my only chance to ask.  With the room so full, Josephine's attention would surely be lost in a moment.  So I said, my daughter never knew my father, but she was very close to my father-in-law.    

Then she said that, "Frank or Francis" is also with him.  

But I was so rattled at this moment that I didn't even recognize my father-in-law's name.  So instead, I said, "I've done a lot of research on my family tree and there are several Frank's in the tree, maybe it's one of them."  My daughter is just about punching me in the side at this point when she says, "Grandpa!"  Oh, my father-in-law's name was Frank.  I regained my composure and said, "That's my father-in-law."

"Is that your daughter sitting next to you?  Frank wants to talk to your daughter.  He wants her to know that he is her guardian angel and that he thinks she is very creative."  

At the time, she was a senior in high school.  That reading, helped her decide to go to school to become an art teacher.  But while in college her extraordinary passion for Environmental Anthropology won out, and she became a double major in Studio Art and Anthropology.  Although she is now on her way to becoming an Anthropology Professor, she remains very artistic and creative. Josephine continued,

"Frank also wanted to say hello to "Debbie."  (Frank's daughter's name is Debbie!)"

More validation that it was indeed her grandfather.  

The Grandpa that she had lost when she was five years old, had reached out to her from the other side to give her a long needed message.  After all of her wishes for him to come back.  After all of the years that had passed since his death.   He had finally "come back" to her . . . the only way that he could.   

The Power of a Grandfather's Love (continuation of Secondary Infertility)

In October of that year, because I was 37 years old, I had an amniocentesis performed to see if the baby was developing correctly.  The "amnio" revealed a perfectly healthy baby boy.  While I was undergoing the "amnio," my father-in-law was undergoing operations and treatments for his pancreatic cancer.  In the beginning, I hoped he would be cured.  I hoped that he wouldn't be taken away from my daughter who loved him so very much.  I hoped that he would be there to take his grandson to a baseball game someday.  But that Christmas, among all the multitude of presents that were there for my daughter, there was one for my unborn son.  My father-in-law handed me this gift, wrapped in brightly colored Christmas wrapping paper and said, "This is for the baby.  I bought it, myself."  He was very proud of this fact.

When I took off the wrapping paper, I saw that it was the "1995 Hess Truck."  I had bought many Hess Trucks for my nephews in the past and I was very excited to receive this first one for my own son.  But as I looked into my father-in-law's eyes . . . I knew.  I knew he didn't think he would be here to give one to my son next year.  I knew that he knew that the cancer was spreading, that it had not been cured as we were all hoping.  In that room full of toys and presents, Christmas lights and family, I knew this was his last Christmas.  I kissed him on the cheek and thanked him.

In January, my doctor asked me to decide if I wanted to have a "v-back."  To try to have a vaginal delivery after my daughter's delivery had ended in a c-section.  I wanted to try for the v-back, but then he told me that he was going on vacation with his family in February during the Presidents' Week school vacation.  Since this was the week before my son was due, I was afraid that my doctor wouldn't be there in the delivery room for his birth.  (This is not the doctor I was going to punch in the eye during my miscarriage.  Our insurance had changed again and I was now able to go back to the obstetrician who had delivered my daughter.)  So I decided to have a scheduled c-section.

My daughter kept asking me when this baby was going to be born.  I told her that he was going to be her birthday present, since he was scheduled to be born ten days after her fifth birthday.  She was a little disappointed with his news, since if it was indeed her birthday present, she would have preferred a sister.  The day of the c-section finally arrived and although we got to the hospital early, later that day a terrible snowstorm blew in.  Our son was born in late morning.  As he was being born I could tell that the doctor was worried.  He was working fast at something.  When all was okay and he handed the baby to the nurse he said to me, "It's a good thing you chose the c-section.  He was breech and the cord was wrapped around his neck."

My father-in-law wasn't feeling strong enough to come to the hospital.  I remember at some point during the next few days, my mother-in-law saying that he was at home watching our daughter.  I wasn't very comfortable about that idea.  During the previous months, when I had left my daughter with him, I would often come home to find him asleep and my daughter watching him.  Somehow, my mother-in-law didn't know how sick her husband was.

I only have one picture of my father-in-law holding my son in his arms.

A few weeks after he was born, my father-in-law went into the hospital.  The same hospital that my children had been born in.  He never regained his strength.  He passed away in early April, six weeks after my son's birth.  

The next Christmas there were plenty of gifts for my son.  Even the 1996 Hess Truck that my mother-in-law had bought him.  But there was no gift that meant more to me than the 1995 Hess Truck that also sat beneath the Christmas tree.  

That February, my daughter turned six.  She made a silent wish as she blew out her candles.  When I put her to bed that night, I asked her what she had wished for.  She said she had wished that grandpa could come back.  I traced my child's face with my fingertips and told her that her grandpa couldn't come back.  That he was in heaven watching over her.  But that answer wasn't enough for her to give up on her wish.  I know there were many other birthday wishes and wishes made over blowing fuzzy dandelions into the wind, when her wish remained the same.  One day, she said to me, "I'm not going to wish for grandpa to come back anymore.  I know that he can't."  

Years later, when my daughter was seventeen years old, she and I went to a benefit at the local volunteer fire house.  A woman named, Josephine Ghiringhelli was going to be there to help people connect with their loved ones who had passed over.  That night, my daughter's wish finally came true.  (To be continued.)

Secondary Infertility, A Silent Pain

Our daughter was now four years old and a lively preschooler, but there was still something missing.  After we dropped our children off at school, it seemed that all of the other moms had babies in their arms to take home with them.  At first, people would say to me, "It's time for another one."  Eventually they started to say, "Well, at least you have one."  Then, they stopped saying anything at all, and so did I.  Perhaps this was the first time in my life when I questioned if pain can be quantitative.  If one person's pain can be measured against another person's pain.  Is it less painful to lose a child or not conceive a child after you have become a mother, then it would be if you had not yet had a successful pregnancy?  Perhaps.  But, in secondary infertility you also carry the burden without the empathy of others.  So you bear the pain in silence.  This is the next part of my story . . .

When we decided that it was time to have another child, we were shocked when I became pregnant right away.  We felt relief that we would be spared having to try for months or years to once again conceive a child.  But three months later, I miscarried.  There were no dreams this time to tell me that "everything will be okay."  There was no reassuring heartbeat on the screen when we had this sonogram.  When we came back to our house to tell my father-in-law, (he had been watching our daughter for us) he just looked down at the ground and said, "Aw, geez." I think one of the worst parts was disappointing him.  When we had our daughter, he was recently retired and the hospital we were in had liberal visiting hours for grandparents.  I loved my father-in-law, but had never had a lot of one-on-one time with him.  He wasn't a really talkative guy and there were usually other family members around.  But in the days after the birth of my daughter, he spent every moment he could in the room with me, holding his new granddaughter.  He had other grandchildren, but they lived in other states.  This was the first time he had a grandchild he could see grow-up on a daily basis.  The two of them became like "two peas in a pod."  He had a special name for her, "little lady," and she just adored him.  As she grew older, they would take long walks together, just the two of them.  Since my own father had died years before, I was so thankful that she had this grandfather to bond with.  So seeing his pain at the loss of our second child, hurt me almost as much as my own pain.  When I was being wheeled into the operating room later that day, the doctor said to me, "Just think of it as a flower that didn't grow."  If I could have gotten up from the gurney and punched him in the eye, I would have.

Over the years that followed, we spent a mini-fortune on home pregnancy tests and ovulation kits.  I had charts of my morning temperatures and became well versed in the science behind conception. Yet, there had been no more pregnancies.  I became depressed and was having a hard time enjoying my daughter's childhood because I was so focused on the disappointment of not having another child. We finally went through fertility tests and found out that there were procedures that could enhance our chances of conception.  But these procedures were not guaranteed, they were expensive and intrusive and I was getting older.  I was now in my late 30's and the chances of me conceiving again were diminishing daily.  In the end, we decided not to have any procedures done.  I couldn't put myself through that.  After all, I did have a child (as everyone had been telling me) and I had already "missed" too much of her childhood.  So I decided to focus on her and on getting myself back to a healthier state.  I started to exercise and finally lost the baby weight from my previous pregnancies. That June, I noticed that I didn't get my cycle.  But I thought that it was because I was exercising.  I wasn't going to be fooled into buying another pregnancy test only to have to deal with the disappointment and the depression, once again.  But the weeks passed, until finally one day I said to myself, "maybe?" That night, my husband slept in our third bedroom because he had a bad cold and didn't want to get me or our daughter sick.  Early in the morning, I awoke and took the pregnancy test.  I was surprised when I saw the tell-tale plus sign appear . . . I was pregnant again.  I left the pregnancy test on the night stand next to my sleeping husband.  In the morning when he awoke, he assumed the pregnancy test was negative because I hadn't woken him.  But then he noticed the test lying on his nightstand.  When he saw the plus sign, he came out into the hallway all excited.  I was happy, but I was also very cautious.

In July I started to bleed again.  This time I left my daughter at a neighbor's house and went directly to the doctor's office.  He performed a sonogram and I could see that there was still, indeed, a heartbeat.  I was reassured for a minute or two.  When I arrived at the doorstep of my neighbor to retrieve my daughter, I broke down in sobs.  She didn't understand.  She said, "but the sonogram showed that the baby was okay."  I said, "That was a half-hour ago."

If I could have lived through the next months continuously attached to a sonogram, maybe I would have been able to enjoy that pregnancy, but I couldn't.  I didn't want to attach myself to this child who was growing inside me, when I was so sure it too would end in loss.  In September we found out that my father-in-law had pancreatic cancer.  (To be continued.)

A Visit From Beyond

I stood on the sidewalk.  Behind me was the house of my childhood.  In front of me, there was a bridge that reached across the street to the other side.  I couldn't see the other end of the bridge, it was lost in a fog.  But standing at the center of the bridge, facing me, was my father.  A feeling of longing washed over me.  I hadn't seen my father since his death ten years before.  So I walked onto the bridge.

After my husband and I were married for three years, we decided to start a family.  But we found that it wasn't as simple as that for us.  The months of disappointment piled up and the echo of emptiness in our house began to echo in my heart.  After two years of trying to conceive, my doctor told me that it was time to take some tests.  But that before he would put me through the multitude of possible examinations, they wanted to check out my husband first.  We scheduled an appointment for him in the month of June.  But just days before his visit to the doctor, I found out I was pregnant.  In what I can only call a state of euphoria, I walked through the next few weeks.  Then in July, I started to bleed.  It wasn't a lot of blood, but it was enough to strike terror into my heart.  The euphoria disappeared and fear took its place.

Ordinarily, at a time like this, I would have called my sister.  After all, she was a nurse and she knew more about these things then I did.  But she and her children were in Switzerland with her husband, who was on sabbatical.  I called the doctor and he scheduled an appointment for the next day. That night I had a dream . . .

I walked until I met my father at the highest point in the center of the bridge.  Even though I was now just inches from him, I still couldn't see much of the bridge beyond him.  He smiled at me and said, "It's going to be okay.  The baby is fine, don't worry."  Then I woke up and I knew that everything would be alright.

The next day, the bleeding stopped.  I went to my appointment anyway and the doctor performed a sonogram.  It was the first time that I saw my daughter's little heart beating on the screen.  A few months later, while in a movie theater, I felt the first flutter in my stomach.  I came to rely on that fluttering, and later, her kicks, to reassure me that she was indeed, still alright.  Then finally, on a morning in early February, our daughter was born.  In an instant, she filled our hearts, and then later, our home.  And the echo in both disappeared.  Thank you, Daddy.

The Tin Box Secret - Chapter 1 (Re-posted again for your convenience.)

Chapter 1                          The Tin Box Secret

 

                                1968

 The March winds blew and searched for a way to invade the room. I huddled under the covers as the windows shuttered beneath the continuous assault from outside. Within the house, I could hear muffled sounds as my mother prepared my father’s lunch in the kitchen.  The clank of his metal lunchbox resounded on the counter, blending with the music that drifted upstairs from the kitchen radio.  My father turned off the bathroom faucet and the steps creaked beneath him on his way down to the kitchen.  My parents hushed voices floated through the hallway and penetrated my bedroom door.  The warm tones of my father’s voice mixed with the lighter, higher pitch of my mother’s.  I have heard it said that my father had the voice of a “crooner;” and it is true that when he sang, his voice could be warm and comforting.  But when he was angry, that same voice could paralyze us with fear.

 

My parents were discussing the arrival of our new television set.  The excitement in our house had been building over the past few days since my father had gone to the local appliance store and purchased our family’s first color TV.  The first time I had ever seen one, was at Marcie’s house.  Marcie’s parents owned a profitable dairy business, so they were able to afford all of the latest gadgets. They even had a side-by-side refrigerator with a built-in ice-maker!  Although Marcie and her family had moved to California two years ago, her color TV would forever remain an object of wonder in my mind.  While the picture itself was full of color, it was the edges of the screen that captivated me.  There seemed to be a rainbow of colors compressed into a halo, framing the moving images within.  I was so fascinated by those colors that I had to quell my urge to touch the screen to see if I could feel the rainbow with my fingertips.  

 

          “Girls,” my mother’s voice called from the kitchen, “it’s time for breakfast.”

 

I pulled myself out of bed and looked over at Angie’s side of the room.  It was as if an imaginary line had been drawn down the middle of the floor.  Her side was perfect, everything in its place.  My side looked like a small explosion had thrown clothes, paper, pencils, crayons, and stuffed animals in every direction.  I stepped away from the bed and pushed everything aside, making a path among the chaos.   I opened my dresser drawers and tried to find something to wear among the disheveled clothing while Angie jumped out of bed, grabbed her neatly folded clothes, and ran into the bathroom.  I was still trying to get my things together ten minutes later when Angie reappeared at the bedroom door and said, “Juliana, you’d better hurry or you’re gonna be late again.”  Angie’s smile revealed that her motive wasn’t completely sympathetic.  At the ripe old age of nine, she learned always to be the “good” child.  She skipped downstairs to the breakfast table and I rushed toward the bathroom, nearly colliding with my older sister, Mary, as she came down the stairs from her attic bedroom.

 

“Queen Mary,” as I called her, had her own room because she was two years older than me.  Just two years, think about it!  If I had been born first, she would be sharing the room with Angie!  Mary was a junior in high school and one of the smartest people I knew.  I peeked out of the door and saw her pause for a moment in front of Joe’s empty room before continuing down to the kitchen.  I swallowed to keep the tears from seeping past my eyelids and walked into the bathroom.  Fifteen minutes later, I joined my sisters at the breakfast table.

 

          My father was just reaching for his coat and lunchbox as I sat down to breakfast.  He kissed each of us goodbye, his clean shaven face soft and smelling like Old Spice.  When he came home from work he would kiss each of us again, but his five o’clock shadow would then scrape against our cheeks like sandpaper against silk.   Now, as he walked down the stairs toward the garage he called back up to us, “See you later alligator!”  My sisters and I replied with a giggle, “In a while crocodile.”  This was our routine every morning. 

 

         The breakfast table had been set with three bowls, a gallon of milk, a small bowl of sugar, one box of Rice Krispies and one box of Cornflakes.  I poured the Rice Krispies into my bowl and sprinkled some sugar over it.  Next I poured the milk over the cereal and bent low to listen for the “snap, crackle, pop!” that the commercials promised.  On the radio a woman was singing, “Winston tastes good like a – bump, bump – cigarette should.”   My mother danced around the kitchen and tried her best to sing along.  She wasn’t very good at it, but I still liked to hear her sing.  I sat back in my chair and smiled, it was so nice to see her happy.  For a brief moment my family seemed almost . . . normal.  Above the radio on the wall was a sign that read, “Don’t cry over spilt milk.”  I don’t know why it was in our house, because if you had spilt the milk, you were bound to be crying.  My father didn't like messes.   By its side was another sign, “A man’s home is his castle,” a reminder to keep the peace.  My muscles automatically tensed and I scooped up a spoonful of cereal and gulped it down.

 

          The news announcer came on next and everyone stopped eating for a minute.  “Tuesday, March 19, 1968.  In the news today, Robert F. Kennedy, who announced this past weekend that he intends to join the race for President of the United States, made it clear that he has concerns about President Johnson’s decision to send 35,000 to 50,000 more troops to Vietnam . . .”

 

We waited to hear the latest tally of dead in the war.  It always seemed to indicate huge losses for the North Vietnamese while the U.S. casualties remained minimal.   It made me think about old western movies.  Once I had been upset when the Indians in an old movie were slaughtered by the cowboys.  My father told me that the actors who played the Indians would just keep getting up, run behind the cameras, and when they came back in front of the cameras, they would fall again.  It was just a trick.  Things weren't always how they seemed.  I kind of felt like the Vietnam War was like that.  According to the news reports, the North Vietnamese seemed to be losing and the United States soldiers were winning.  But I didn't quite believe them.

 

Even though Vietnam was so far away, it was real to me.  My brother, Joe, was in the army and he had been in Vietnam for over a year already.  That’s why it got so quiet at the kitchen table.  I wondered now why President Johnson wanted to send over more soldiers if it was true that we were winning the war.  I was glad when the news ended and The Fifth Dimension started singing their new hit.

 

For a moment, I stared at my cereal.  The milk slowly dissolved the Rice Krispies until they became soft and bloated.  I touched my head as the pain returned once again.  “Another headache, honey?” my mother asked.  Thinking back to the night before, images from the dream came and went.  An overwhelming feeling of loss crept up into my throat and almost suffocated me.  The headaches had a habit of following those dreams.  Dreams that seemed more like warnings, or perhaps memories, than actual dreams.  My mother handed me some Aspergum and I popped the chewy medicine in my mouth as I cleared my cereal from the table, no longer feeling hungry.

 

We put on our coats and hats.  My mother always insisted that we wear our hats, but I knew that as soon as Mary was out of sight, she would take hers off.   Mary thought she was too cool to wear a hat.  She turned right to walk north toward the high school bus stop and Angie and I turned left.  Once we were around the corner, Angie and I also separated, she walked east toward the elementary school and I continued south toward the junior high.  As I approached the school, I looked out over the bay and watched the seagulls.  The school sat on filled-in swampland.  The bay stretched out south and as far west and east as I could see.  I glanced nervously in all three directions and scanned the skies.  Then I surveyed the new park that was in the process of being constructed across the street from the school.  The park was still a long way from being finished.  Tractors had moved around piles of sand and dirt, and the once beautiful marshlands, now had a scarred look about them.   When I was younger, I had liked to walk along the shore of the bay, behind the sand dunes, hidden from the world.  Occasionally, when the tractors were silent, I still found peace there.  I had a place along the beach.  It was my secret place, where I would sit and just think about things.  I worried about how long it would be kept secret once the park was finished.  But then again, I worried about a lot of things.

 

Harbor Junior High had a bomb shelter built into the basement.  Once a year, the teachers would take us down into the shelter, to see where we would hide if the Russians launched missiles against New York.  Of course, they didn't actually say that, but we all knew what they were thinking.  Sweet lemon drop candies were stored there in case we had to survive for some time without food.  However, we were given lemon drops whenever they brought us down.  I know this was supposed to make the shelter seem less scary, but this made me worry that there wouldn't be any candy left if we really needed it.  Another thing that worried me was that if the Russians dropped a bomb on Long Island, how safe would I be in a bomb shelter that was constructed on filled-in swampland with the bay just a few feet away?  Well, I guess I’d be safer than Angie at the elementary school.   There, if they had an air-raid drill, all they did was walk into the hall, face the wall, and put their hands over their heads and hope that the bomb didn't drop through the ceiling.  The fear I shared with every child of the Cold War was very real to me.  I had this image in my head of a control room behind a red iron curtain where a man stood poised over an electronic panel.  Beneath his fingers, lay a red button and at any moment he could push that button and missiles would be launched against the United States.  I took another long glance at the sky over the bay.  I was reassured to find that the sky was still empty of Russian missiles.

 

My friend, Heather, was waiting for me by the bicycle rack.  She had a spirit that defied her lot in life.  Heather and I had one thing in common that had made us best friends since kindergarten.  As the smallest girls in our grade, we watched as the other girls grew taller.  Our petite stature fortified our friendship and protected us from feeling left behind.  Our height was, however, where the physical similarities ended.  Her hair was as blonde as mine was dark, her eyes were round and blue while mine were almond shaped and brown.  And today, her blue eyes were rimmed with red.

 

          The bell rang and we made our way through the crowd to our lockers. Grabbing her arm and pulling her close, I jumped right in, “What’s going on with you?”  Heather looked like she was afraid that if she opened her mouth she might start crying right there in the middle of the hallway.  She clenched her jaw shut and just shook her head, miserably.

 

“You want to wait and talk at lunch?”

 

She nodded her head yes and I squeezed her hand before we parted to head toward our separate homerooms.  As I walked away, I kept turning around to check on her.  I was almost afraid to find out what her latest crisis was.  Heather’s dad had left when she was little.  She and her mom had lived with her grandmother for a while; but when that got to be “too much” (those were the words that her grandmother had used) they spent the following years moving from one rented house in the neighborhood, to another.  Her grandmother had died last year and now all she had was her mom.  Her mom must have inherited a little money from Heather’s grandmother, but if she did, it hadn’t seemed to make any difference in Heather’s life.  Except that maybe her mother had more money to buy booze.

 

My homeroom was at the end of the hall and it was for the kids with names at the end of the alphabet.  I hated being last because I was always put in the back where I was made to feel like a leftover.  This was especially a problem because of my height.  I would inevitably end up sitting at the back of a classroom with towering classmates sitting in front of me, totally blocking my view of the blackboard!  I promised myself that when I got married, I would marry someone whose name began with a letter at the beginning of the alphabet.  The teacher called my name for attendance, “Juliana Ventura?”  “Here.” I replied from somewhere in the depths of the classroom, beyond the sea of heads.  My teacher had to take a few steps to the right so that she could see my raised hand, then she checked off my name in her little book.

 

I had a hard time concentrating in my morning classes because I kept thinking about Heather.  When it was time for lunch I raced down to the cafeteria to meet her.  She looked a little better than she had in the morning, but she still seemed pale.

 

I gently coaxed her, “Do you feel like talking?”

 

In a barely audible voice, Heather mumbled, “My mom didn’t come home last night.”  This was not the first time that this had happened, so I didn’t understand why she continued to get so upset every time that it did.

 

“Okay, but she’s probably there now.  Maybe she just had to work late or something,” I reasoned.

 

Heather just stared at her lunch while I took a bite of my apple butter sandwich. “I’m sure she’ll be back by the time you get home,” I said with more conviction.  Heather’s eyes still didn’t leave her sandwich.

 

“Hey,” I tried to change the subject.  “Did I tell you we’re getting a colored television set today?”

 

“That’s cool,” she said rather flatly.

 

“Maybe you can come over this weekend and watch it with me?”

 

“Yeah, I guess.” 

 

My heart went out to her and I wanted so much to make everything better, but I just didn’t know how.   I thought about how horrible it would be to have an alcoholic parent.  At my house, the alcohol was in one of our living room end tables.  The bottles had been in there for at least ten years.  The only time they were taken out was on New Year’s Eve when my parents made whiskey sours, highballs, or screwdrivers.

 

“Wait for me after school and I’ll walk home with you,”

 

“Thanks, Julie.  You’re the best friend, ever!”

 

But I didn’t feel like I was the best friend ever.  I mean, really, what could I possibly do to help her?  After all, her life was a mess, and mine wasn’t much better.

 

As I went through the rest of the day, I tried to think happier thoughts. I kept wondering if the new television set had been delivered yet.  It was going to replace our old television that was built into a wood cabinet in the downstairs recreation room.  You had to open the doors to see the TV screen.  We also had a small black and white television set, with rabbit ear antennas, in our upstairs living room.  The downstairs TV didn’t need rabbit ears because it was hooked up to an antenna on our roof.  The small black and white would be brought up to our bedrooms when we were really sick.  Like the time all three of us girls got the chicken pox.  First Mary got sick and the doctor came to give the rest of us shots.  I remember running away from the doctor, but I finally got caught and he put me over his knee.  But the shot didn’t help.  I got the chicken pox anyway.

 

My last class was social studies and Donny DeLaney sat in the back of the room.  He rarely took off his black leather jacket.  Although he was the star of the wrestling team, he was a loner and didn’t seem to have any real friends.  The guys were afraid of him, but behind his back they made fun of him.   His great grandfather, Old Man Finster, was infamous in our town.  There were stories that he had murdered people with axes and kept their bodies buried in his yard.  The old man’s son, Sam, had had a reputation for being a tough angry young man and he had left his own legacy of terror before dying in a bar fight.  Sam’s daughter, Margaret, Donny's mother, found out she was pregnant while still in high school.  Margaret’s grandfather forced her to marry the baby’s father, Trevor DeLaney, and, as the story goes, in doing so, she had traded one prison for another.

 

 

Trevor had been the high school wrestling champion and his old wrestling trophies and photos still lined the showcases in the gym’s hallway.   It was obvious from the photos that he had been a handsome young man, but his eyes were as cold as stone.  It gave me the creeps just to look at those pictures.  These days, people just assumed that Donny was exactly like his father, so they steered clear of him.  But it seemed to me that he had never actually done anything to earn that reputation, except to be born into the Finster/DeLaney family.

 

Sometimes, Donny would look across the room at me and catch me staring at him.  His brooding eyes were a deep warm blue, so unlike his father’s, but still, they seemed haunted.  For an unguarded moment they would reveal a puzzled expression.  Then his eyelids would close like shades and when they opened the expression would be gone.  It was as if the real Donny was hiding behind this persona that everyone else had given him.  Those eyes held a million questions, and sometimes I felt as though he thought I had the answers.  This always made me feel uneasy, and today was no different.  When Social Studies class was over and the bell rang, I ran for my locker.

 

Heather was just coming out of the girls’ bathroom so I waited for her to get her jacket.  She was so quiet on the walk home that we may as well have been in a funeral procession.   When we finally reached her house, I was glad to see her mom’s car parked in the driveway.  Heather’s face lit up with relief but she hesitated at the front door.  “Julie, would you come in with me?”

 

I looked down at my watch, hesitantly, “Uh, sure.”  I held her hand as we walked through the front door.  She had only lived in this house for a couple of months and I had never been inside it before.  One of my father’s rules was that I had to come straight home from school.  I really wasn’t allowed to socialize during the school year and this was a hard rule for me to follow.  Sometimes, his rules made it difficult for me to have friends.  Heather seemed to be the only one who understood.  In the summer months, I had a bit more freedom, but the summer seemed a long way away as our breaths crystallized in the cold afternoon air. 

 

In addition to rules, my father had a lot of prejudices, so he didn’t like my being friends with anyone who was different.  Once, when I was eight, I asked if I could join the Pioneer Girls.  My father had exploded, “That’s run by Lutherans!”  The way he went on about Lutherans after that made it clear that he thought they were a mind-controlling cult bent on stealing me away from the Catholic Church.  I never asked again.

 

As I entered Heather’s house I reminded myself to make this quick.  The house was dark and musty and if it hadn't been for the light that poured in through the open front door, I might have fallen right into the gaping hole in her living room floor.   Heather let go of my hand and walked around it and up the stairs to her mom’s bedroom.  I wasn't sure if I should follow or not, so I just stood there staring at the hole.  I inched closer and peered into the darkness over the edge and down into the basement below.  I shivered, stepped back and closed the front door.  But the inside of the house wasn't much warmer than outside.  I wrapped my arms around my body to slow down the shaking.  I could still see my breath form in the air.  I carefully walked around the hole, sat down on her couch and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dim light.  The room was gloomy and sparsely furnished.  Dust had gathered in every corner and the floor had long ago lost its varnish.  Scratches evidenced where furniture had been scraped along the surface.  I was wondering if any had fallen to the basement below through the hole, when I heard a sound and looked up.

 

Heather slowly came back down the stairs.  Her small body shaking so hard I was afraid she’d fall.  When she reached the bottom step her anger flashed, “She’s so drunk I can’t even wake her!  She’s just snoring away in her bed and her room reeks of gin!”  Heather’s anger and frustration were bordering on hysteria.  I looked at my watch, it was already after four.  I knew that I needed to get going but I couldn't just leave Heather like this.

 

I took charge and led her to the kitchen, “Let’s get something to eat.”   In Italian families, you learn that food is comfort.  We opened the cupboard but there wasn't a whole lot there.  We did, however, find a box of chocolate cake mix.  Next I checked the refrigerator; there were eggs and milk so I placed all of the items on the kitchen table.  “Let’s make chocolate cake!  It always makes me feel better!” I tried to ignore the little voice in my head that was saying, “Go home, Julie,” as we mixed the cake.  I tried to think of an excuse I could give my mom.  Maybe I could say that I had stayed at school for extra help.  As long as it didn’t take too long, I’d be okay.

 

 

When we put the mixer on high speed, cake mix flew everywhere in the kitchen.  By the time we had the cake in the oven, we were laughing so hard that our sides ached.  We turned on her kitchen radio and sang along.  We danced around the kitchen and checked the cake every few minutes, opening the door to the oven to see if the cake was done.  About an hour later we were finally sitting at her kitchen table each with a giant (although a bit flat) piece of chocolate cake and a glass of milk.  To me, there was nothing like warm, just-out-of-the-oven, chocolate cake.  I always ate the bottom and saved the top for last, because the top was my favorite part.  It was hard not to stuff it all in my mouth at once because it just smelled and tasted so good.  But I had learned that if you take your time and eat it slowly, it’s so much more satisfying.

 

“So is Donny DeLaney still staring at you in class?”  Heather asked with a giggle.  I was glad to see that Heather was thinking about something other than her mom, but I wasn’t too sure I liked this subject either.

 

I took a deep breath, “Yeah.”

 

“So, are you going to do anything about it?”

         

 “Like what?’

 

 “I don’t know.  Do you want me to ask him if he likes you?”

 

“No!”

 

“Oh, okay, I won’t.  But one of you has just got to do something or I’m going to get involved.”

 

“Don’t you dare!”   I grabbed a piece of cake and threw it at her!

 

“Hey!” She grabbed a piece and threw it at me and it landed in my hair.

 

When we were finally finished with our food fight, we both felt a lot better.  That is until I noticed the time, it was almost six o’clock!

         

“Sorry Heather, but I've got to get going.”

 

         

          “Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up.”  Suddenly the concern in the room shifted from her to me.

 

At my house, we ate dinner every night at five o’clock sharp.  My father got home at a quarter to five and we all sat together to eat dinner as a family.  My father sat in his seat with his belt slung over his lap.  We never ate out or ordered in.  My mother cooked all of our meals and she cooked them the way my father liked them.  Not too much garlic, no rice, and no broccoli.  As I walked past the hole in Heather’s living room again, I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. 

 

Like a condemned man walking to the electric chair I walked home as slowly as I could.  After all, I was already late.  Maybe if I delayed my arrival long enough I could come up with an excuse that he would accept.  About a block from my house, I saw him walking toward me.  He didn't say a word.  His face was set in stone when he grabbed my arm and just about dragged me home.  All my excuses died on my tongue before even getting a chance to escape through my clenched teeth.  The house was silent, although I could see that everyone was still in the kitchen.  The dinner sat cold on the table between them.  My mother and sisters sat there quietly, as I was pushed up the stairs.  In my room my dad took off his belt. I knew what was coming next.  His eyes were glazed with anger.  Usually, when he punished me, he’d hit me with the belt a few times.  But this time he just couldn't get the anger out of him.  So he just kept hitting.  When he finally stopped, I could hear crying. Then I realized, through my own tears, that he was crying too.  His voice cracked as he said, “Don’t you ever do that again!”  He turned away from me and went downstairs, back to his dinner.

 

Later that night, after my mother had spread Mercurochrome on the fresh cuts across my back, I lay on my stomach in bed on top of the cool sheets.  I listened as my family gathered downstairs in the recreation room around the new color TV.  And in the darkness of my room, I tried to imagine the colors that were surely outlining the screen.  I reached my hand out, and in my mind, I felt the rainbow against my fingertips.

Magic, Princes, and Fairy Tales

If we are beautiful and good like Cinderella, then with a little help from our fairy godmother, Prince Charming will come and rescue us on his white horse and we will live happily ever after.  That is the fairy tale that we learn as children and it is the fairy tale that we strive for throughout our lives.  But sooner or later we realize that fairy tales are just fairy dust, they just aren't real life.  The problem is that Cinderella is looking for magic, princes, and fairy tales to make her happy.  She thinks she needs them to tell her she is beautiful and good.  But no matter how many times or how many people tell her she is beautiful and good, if she does not believe it herself, then they might as well be saying nothing at all.

Through the pain and disappointment in our lives, we hear that we are not worthy.  We come to expect the pain and disappointment.  We may even bring it on ourselves because we have decided before we even start that it will end that way.  We build an impenetrable fortress around our hearts and souls to protect ourselves from others.  We promise ourselves that we will never be vulnerable again.  We can't listen to other people, those "happy" people, tell us that we will find that "fairy tale love" someday.  Yet who among us have lived our entire lives without pain and disappointment?  Is anyone really immune to it?  Does this fairy tale exist in anyone's life?

We are born alone.  Yes, there are others there, our mother at the very least.  But she is not experiencing the same thing that we are at birth. We will live our lives alone. Yes, there will be others there.  But they will not be experiencing the same thing that we are in life.  We will die alone even if there are others present.  Life is, in essence, solitary, but we are social beings and we need others to share it with.  This controversy is the core of our unhappiness.  Because the experiences we live are not the same as the experiences of those whom we live with.  The connection that we can have with another human being is limited.  The closest connection there can be is between a mother and a child.  But even that has its limitations.

The lesson we need to learn most through the journey of our life, is that we are beautiful and good. But it is only you who can teach yourself this.  No one else can give you this gift.  Only you can do it. You don't need me to tell you, but I will say it anyway, "You are beautiful and good."  Now, I want you to say it to yourself . . . "I am beautiful and good."  Doesn't that feel good?

I have so many friends who are going through difficult times in their relationships and there are no words that I can give them that will make it all alright.  I have been through difficult times myself. And there are may times when I feel I am not worthy.  No matter how many people tell me I am, it is not until I tell it to myself and believe it, that it becomes real.  Life is not a storybook.  Life is a journey full of lessons.  Love yourself and you will be loved.  Value yourself and you will be worthy.

Poison

There's a poison that seeps into your soul,
It sneaks through your mind and takes control,
The energy it demands costs a physical toll.
The end of the story, already foretold.

Let it go.

Nurture it, and it will take its hold,
Soon it will leave seeds to be sowed,
They will fester and invade as they grow,
Corrupting your marrow till it turns to mold.

Let it go.

The ice in your veins makes you cold,
Your future is what it steals so bold,
It leaves in it's place, a deep dark hole,
Vengeance, anger, and hatred are revealed as the foe.

Let it go.

Look In My Eyes (Do you see me?)

Sitting in the passenger seat of our car, we sped along on a three lane highway.  A car, to our right, traveled just a little ahead of us.  I looked at the back of the driver's head.  He was looking in front of him, at the road that lay before him.  He didn't see me.  He didn't hear me.  His windows were closed, as were ours . . . and yet . . . he turned around and looked into my eyes.  How did he know I was looking at him?  What sixth sense allows us to know that someone is connecting with us, either on purpose or by accident?

The man in that car had an entire life that is unknown to me.  As far as I know, I have never met him and probably never will.  Yet for one moment, our lives connected.  

What of the friends I had in childhood?  Those who were so close to me when I was a school girl.  Those whom I shared so much with.  They have gone on to have lives without me.  They have not ceased to exist simply because I cannot see them, hear them, touch them.  They live lives of joys and sorrows and perhaps our lives, through the magic of Facebook, even touch every now and then.  Yet my world is really limited to what I can see, hear, feel, touch, and taste.  So when they leave my presence, for me, they do cease to exist, except perhaps in my memory or thought.  

What of my children?  They live because of me.  I nurtured them until they could stand on their own and live apart from me.  They now have experiences that I am not able to see or hear.  Do I still exist for them when they are away from me?  Surely, they know I am here.  That my life will go on, as will theirs.  That is the way it should be.  

What of those who once loved me?  Those who have now left this life to move on to what comes next.  Do they still exist?  Do they know that I still exist?  Are they closer to me now then they were in life?  They live in my thoughts and in my memories.  I see them in my dreams.  Do they see me?  

What of those who will exist in the generations to come?  Will they know me?  Will they wonder who I was and if I am watching over them?  Will they know that I once lived?

What of you, my reader?  You who have found me through my writing?  There are seven billion people on this Earth and most will live out their days without knowing that I existed.  But, somehow, you have found me.  Through my writing you have looked into my eyes.  Without being in my presence you have existed and lived full lives.  Some of you have lived in distant countries with cultures so very different from mine and yet, we have connected.  How amazing is that?  Do you feel it?  Whomever you are, my reader, for this brief moment we connect.  For this moment you see me, even if I cannot see you.  

Excerpts from Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" (c. 1900):

It avails not, neither time or place—distance avails not;	20
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence;
I project myself—also I return—I am with you, and know how it is.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt;
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd; . . . Closer yet I approach you; What thought you have of me, I had as much of you—I laid in my stores in advance;   90 I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.    Who was to know what should come home to me? Who knows but I am enjoying this? Who knows but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?