At The Beginning

One does not remember the beginning. When you are here, you know there was a beginning. I suppose it is for the best. After all, who would choose to remember the birth trauma coming from the tight squeeze of the birth canal. It's quite interesting that the most frightening of my early nightmares was an unseen force rolling down on top of me squeezing and smothering. Many were the nights I woke up in dread fear from that nightmare. "Fortunately", we move on and the fears of those early memories give way to the very real fears of life on the edge.

At times it seems as if I was born on the edge. My oldest sibling, a brother, died a few days after birth from a lung trauma. Easily repaired in this day and age, it was fatal in 1946. My parents never recovered from this innocent death and it stayed with them through there own deaths many years later. I was preceded in birth by a sister. I arrived in September 1948 to a world of fear and hostility. My parents lived in fear another of their children would die. They reacted to this by keeping their distance, a decision that prevented love from being given or displayed. In fact, there was never much attention unless I screwed up or showed weakness.

A few months after the above picture was taken, I received by first "spanking". Spanking was the name my parents gave the beatings I got. I did not know that difference until later in my childhood. I did not know other children were not hurt that way. Of course, I know now children can do nothing that warrants that kind of intervention. Needless to say, the ideal world portrayed in the picture disappeared dissolving into chaos and fear. For sure, there was love and moments of genuine concern. It is just that, for a child, you never knew when and where the trauma would come from.

It seems I lived most of my early childhood on the edge. An edge you could never tell when it would collapse underneath you. Walking on egg shells became a way of life. There were people I knew but I never really had childhood friends. There were cousins and we were close but, they had their own traumas. I came to hear my mothers words reverberate over and over in my head, "A child's place is seen and not heard". Over and over and over and over.