Me in Pieces, Part 1

I recently had an interview with BlogCatalog, (http://www.thetinboxtrilogy.com/interview-with-the-author.html).  In the interview, I was asked how I had felt about becoming a mother.  I told her that it was what I had wanted most, but it was also what I had feared the most.  My experiences as a child and as a teenager are what brings me to my writing.  It is why I wrote my first novel, "The Tin Box Secret," which is specifically for teenage girls.  It is why I have such a burning need to blog and speak to others, hoping for the chance to help even one person out there.  So I think it is about time, that I tell you a little about who I was and why I have become me.

When I was a very little girl, my father had a "pet" name for me.  I was his "Korean Doll."  My eyes had an Asian look to them, and thus, my nickname.

I was happy as a small child.  When it came time for me to go to kindergarten, at four-years-old, I had no fear of going to school and being away from home, as some other new kindergartners did.  I was excited to learn and to make friends.  In kindergarten and first grade I did very well in school and loved that my first grade teacher taught us Spanish words.  She was engaged to a man from Mexico and so she introduced us to the language.  But in the second half of first grade, my father became ill.

No one told me about his illness, but I saw things and heard words.  One time my mother was washing my father's hair in the laundry sink and his hair was falling out in clumps, and I knew that this wasn't right.  The words I heard were "Cancer" and "treatments."  I knew they were bad words, but still, I didn't know what they really meant.  My father was a strict, yet loving father.  My mother was more like a child.  She hid things from my father when she wanted to do things.  Like when she would take me out of school in kindergarten and we would ride the bus to Hempstead to go shopping. There was wonderful pizza at the Hempstead bus terminal, I can still smell it today when I think of it, and there were stores like Grants Department Store, that had toys to look at.  She would tell me before we got on the bus, "Tell the man you are four."  "But, I'm five now," I would say.  "Yes, but if you are four you ride for free."  So I was four.  One time she bought me a paint-by-number kit that had glitter in the paint that sparkled. She said, "I'll buy you this but don't tell Daddy.  Don't tell Daddy that we went shopping, he'll be mad."  So I learned to lie.

One of the strict rules in our house was that I was to come home straight from school.  I had friends at school, but not many friends at home.  There was a girl who lived next door, Marcia, and she was my best friend.  But she went to a different elementary school, because between our houses, lies the border between the schools.  A girl at my school, Denise, invited me over to her house for a play-date.  I decided to lie to my parents so that I could go.  I decided I would tell them that I had stayed after school for extra-help.  On the day of our play-date, we played in her basement.  She had many dolls and toys that I didn't have.  I got carried away with the fun we were having, and I forgot to check the time.  Her mother called down to us and said it was time for me to go home because they were going to have dinner.  When I saw the kitchen clock said 6 o'clock, I knew I was in deep trouble.  I walked back toward the school so that I would be coming home from the right direction.  I tried to think of a better excuse, since the school was now dark and no teacher would have kept me for extra-help so late.  As I walked past the school, I saw my father on the other side of the street.  He crossed it diagonally to get to me quicker.  He grabbed hold of my arm and he dragged me home (about three long blocks).

He brought me up to my room, took of his belt, and started to hit me.  I knew about his belt, it laid across his lap every night at dinner.  He would pick it up and bending it in half, he would hold each end and snap it together to make a threatening sound.  I knew he had hit my older brothers with it before, but he had never hit me.  But that night, he hit me, and hit me, and hit me, and hit me and he just couldn't seem to stop.  I was six years old.  I knew I had done something wrong, but I just wanted to have a friend.  This was the man who was supposed to love me and protect me.  This was the man who called me his Korean Doll.  And as much as I loved him, for the first time, I was afraid of him too.  I didn't understand then that he was struggling, trying to survive cancer and all the fears and worries that accompanies that for a father.  I didn't understand then that he had been terrified that someone had taken me.  I didn't understand then that finding me, disobeying him, had pushed him over an edge that he couldn't stop falling from.

Years later, after my father's death, I was telling this story to my boyfriend, who would later become my husband.  I was telling him that I no longer knew if it really had happened or not.  I don't know if I can explain this, but I didn't know if it was a memory or a story.  I had blocked it out of my memory for years and one day it was in my head again.  My older sister overheard me say this and she came down the stairs to where we were sitting and said, "Yes, it happened.  You had scars on your back the whole summer."

Although those scars faded a long time ago, there are others, not so visible, that are still there.  It wasn't until I was a mother, and in my thirties, that I could finally understand all that had happened from his perspective.  That is the day that I started on this journey.  This journey to heal myself so that I could be the best parent that I could be.

(to be continued . . . )