Category: Childhood

My purpose for blogging is so that I can safely revisit my past, my childhood and all the experiences that helped make me who I am.  I want to disentangle those things in my spirit that were hard to live through, those things that at times I refused to experience and escaped from in one way or another.  I want to extricate them from my soul, pull them out kicking and screaming, and stand them before me.  I want to investigate them, revisit these memories, see them with different eyes; with the physical and emotional maturity I am capable of today.  I want to relive them, feel them and then decide- is there something there I want to keep or am I ready to let it go? 

I hadn’t thought of O, E or my childhood in a long time and suddenly it seems I’m being bombarded by my past.  Writing about it was a good way to alleviate the tension that particular time caused in me, tension I wasn’t aware I still carried.   There are things there I still need to revisit, rehash, revise and relive but that’s for another day.   Today I respond to my friend, Craig’s, curiosity while honoring my memories of O and E; of the pain they caused and the growth they unwittingly spurred.
Continue reading “Let sleeping dogs lie”

Recently, my little brother, T., bought himself an interesting book titled The Dangerous Book for Boys.  He had just purchased the book when I met up with him and he was still basking in the glow of excitement.  He flipped quickly through the pages, showing me images of knots, paper airplanes and other instructions of things a boy “should” know how to do.  At that very moment, I saw my brother in a different light.  No longer a tattoed, pierced, hard working man of 30-something with wife and kids in tow…he was now a child of six or seven, wishing for his father to give him the attention he needed, wishing for his mother to come home and tend to his needs, for his older sister to back the hell off and mind her own business.

I saw the child he was and the child still there and I loved him.

My brother and I didn’t have the easiest childhood.  Mom, who was the matriarch of our family, had a car accident that left her disabled and needing care herself and Dad was usually escaping into work.  T. and I were left to our own devices, to deal with life as best we could.  This is a tall order for children ages 5 and 8.  Even with the involvement of neighbors, sitters and others we suffered abuses of all kinds and experimented in areas we had no business exploring.

Continue reading “A Child is NOT a Short Adult”