🔵 By Timothy Brunner. Photo by lauragrafie.
My earliest memory is one from when I was 3 years old. I know that because my younger sister was still in a carrier. Here is what I, myself, remember… It was night and there was snow on the ground. I can sea the street we had to cross and how I had to reach up to hold onto my mother’s back jeans pocket. My older sister was holding mom’s one hand while the other held my younger sister in a carrier. The next image I can see is the face of a building. The stairs were concrete with decorative, curved railings leading to a large wooden door. I had to step high for my little legs to reach each successive step. Flashing to the scene that comes next finds me sitting on a bar stool that is so tall I needed to be lifted down. I was eating a bowl of oatmeal. I don’t know if it was flavored or sweetened at all, but I surely enjoyed it. I also know it was Christmas-time because there was a Christmas tree with decorations and all. That is the extent of what I recall about my earliest memory. I now know more about that time and events surrounding it, but that knowledge is not a memory. I asked my mother about it and was initially met with disbelief that I actually recalled it. She thought another relative told me about this place. It was an abused women’s shelter.
I have heard it said that a person’s first conceptualization of God is how they view their parents as a child. For the moment I want to set that idea aside and say that my mother is my hero now, long after that childhood illusion was shattered. In having that God-construct torn down, to have the human weaknesses exposed, and to understand how her love was able to persevere at all is far more laudable than a childlike, blind faith.
My religious faith is blind because I have not met God in this world. My faith in others can never be blind because I will come to know them. To earn my faith under such scrutiny is not easy. To know my mother, her struggles, and her sacrifices is humbling.
Here is what I know about these events. Not long after I was born my father went to prison. I believe it was for burglary, but I am not sure. I do know he was, and remains, an alcoholic of the most degenerate ilk. He has notable traumas and significant demons against which he struggles, but the faith my mother has earned from me is not bestowed upon him. I will never be sympathetic to his cause because of his failures: His surrender instead of sacrifice. My mother was in a string of abusive relationships during this time, which I understand in a certain smokey and hazy light. If I retreat a few years from this time, I could explain how a 14 year old girl was pregnant. Then how her abusive and strictly religious mother took custody of that child upon its birth, evicted her daughter, and would not allow her to acknowledge her own first-born son. That is not the direction we travel, here, so I will press forward instead of falling back.
I understand how a woman in her early 20’s, single mother of three children, with no education and no family support in the mid-80’s, would be looking for the support of another person. Not just for financial stability, for I don’t disregard that. No, I believe the hardest part of such a situation would be the helplessness and loneliness. To carry on in such a state while caring for 3 kids must have been terrifying. The emotional and psychological needs to feel wanted, loved, and safe are instinctual at some point.
One result of this cornucopia of needs was a string of relationships that weren’t at the acme of picturesque health. One of these associations led to my mother being in the car when a crime was committed. When she was faced with the stereotypical “prisoner’s dilemma”, she decided to testify. This was a significant pivot point in that young woman’s life, but it was also not the end of this situation. Her boyfriend of that moment went to prison due to her testimony, but he was granted bail. He came to see my mother and decided to forego any arguments and simply beat her until, in her own words, she thought she was going to die. I do not consciously remember any of this, but I know we children were in the apartment. I do thank God for the little things… Like how this man who nearly beat my mother to death wasn’t a child abuser.
Thus it was that we found ourselves in a women’ shelter around Christmas that year. It wasn’t long after this that my mother decided to pursue and get her G.E.D, attend night-school to become a nurse, and do everything she could to give my sisters and I a decent home. I guess I should also take a moment to thank God for mixed blessings… Sometimes I tragedy can change a trajectory.