Archive for the Category »Memoir «

A little girl stands at the window. I am uncertain of her age. Five? Six? Seven? That part of the memory has been worn away by time. All I can recall vividly is a little girl standing at the living room window. She leans over the radiator. It is hard, cold, and unpleasant to touch. It is a barrier between her and the pane, keeping her from pressing her forehead to the glass. The view she cranes uncomfortably to see is nothing spectacular. The window overlooks an empty driveway. Even so, the girl is fixated on the pavement below. She is looking for her daddy.

Her father is a cable repairman. He schedules his stops so he is nearby his house in the late afternoon. He likes to go home on his break. Every day he visits his family for a short while before he returns his bucket truck and punches out for the day.

In my memory, every afternoon looks the same as another, except for one. And even that afternoon starts off routinely. The girl’s father comes home on his break. He spends time with his wife and children. He picks up the keys to his truck. He heads to the door. But on this particular afternoon, he says, “I’ve got to hit the road.”

The phrase reminds the little girl of a song she’s heard on the radio, maybe earlier that day. As she sits on the floor playing, she begins to sing:

Hit the road, Jack. And don’t you come back no more, no more, no more, no more.
Hit the road, Jack. And don’t you come back no more.

There is a lapse in my memory here. The girl is in her own world. She does not witness any reaction to her song. The tune means nothing to her. How could she anticipate what would transpire?

Something significant passes between her parents in those unnoticed moments. The door closes. The atmosphere shifts.

“Why did you do that?” her mother snaps.

The girl is startled. Although no hand is laid upon her, the urgency of her mother’s words grab her and shake her until her brain rattles.

“Why did you sing that? Do you know what you’ve done?”

Her mother’s voice is wild, angry, desperate.

“Now he may never come back!”

Her mother turns away and leaves her.

This is too much for the girl to understand. Why wouldn’t her daddy come back? It is inconceivable to her that anyone would take a few stupid song lyrics so personally. She would feel certain that her mother was overreacting, but something in the woman’s expression assures the girl that every word is true.

She may have driven her daddy away forever.

A little girl stands at the window making promises upon promises to God. She will be so good if He will just bring her daddy home. She stares at the driveway, crushed by guilt. She made a mistake. She made daddy leave. Mommy doesn’t love her anymore. It’s all her fault. She is a bad, bad girl.

She stands at that window for the twenty or so minutes it takes until her father returns home. She stands at that window until she is sure she sees her father’s face. And then the girl breathes again.

This is the first memory I have of learning about my father’s illness.

My first sister and I are two years apart. I think parents assume that two siblings close in age will become happy playmates. The baby’s lonely, they think. She needs a friend. Maybe for some families that turns out to be true and the children get along famously. For our family, it was not the case.

My sister and I were rivals from as early as the day of her birth. That’s not to say that I hadn’t wanted a sister. I had requested one, in fact. No brothers, thank you. And as an afterthought, I informed my parents what to name her as well. Having a new baby in the house? I was on board.

But then that sister came along and my parents began to notice . . . oddities. For instance, as soon as she could grasp firmly, the baby delighted in grabbing a fistful of my hair, wrenching my head towards the floor, and teething on my frightened face. Though I don’t recall harboring ill will towards her in the early years, every picture of us together features me smiling broadly as I embrace her in a headlock.

I didn’t begin to understand her aversion to me until she was capable of speech. At that point she made her position on the issue clear: “I wish I were an only child!” I don’t think this was her first sentence, but I suspect it followed quickly. My standard reply was a sometimes angry, sometimes confused: “But I was here first. You couldn’t be an only child.” At this point she would give me a severe look that somehow implied that her spark of life was wrongfully delayed in transit to my mother’s womb and she couldn’t have been more surprised to pop out and find me already in existence. This glare always conveyed the sense that I was misplaced in the world, dropped into a family where I didn’t belong . . . and that matter could yet be rectified. I think that is the reason I wet my bed long past the time when it was excusable.

When I was five years old, my parents again came to me to announce that Mommy would be having another baby. “What do you want, a brother or a sister?” they asked.

“A brother,” I informed them.

“You don’t want another baby sister?” (Guess who had already put in her vote for a sister.)

“No. Last time I asked for a sister and I got her. I want a brother.”

My parents were taken aback by my reply. They realized that they had a problem on their hands. They’d asked me what I wanted, I had a definitive answer, and they couldn’t guarantee me anything. “Well, what if God gives us a little girl?” they asked.

“Bring home a puppy instead.”

When I share these stories with people, they chuckle. Then they politely accuse me of exaggerating. It is impossible for most folks to imagine toddlers having complex emotions of resentment.

It was my third birthday. The family was over to celebrate. My sister saw that my mother had baked me a cake. She saw relatives giving me brightly papered packages. She saw people hugging me and fawning over me and singing to me. And this nine-month-old child, who previous to that day couldn’t have been bothered with having legs, stood up and confidently and steadily walked across the room.

The adults cried out, “Look! The baby’s walking!” And they all ran to experience her first steps. Her unwavering, deliberate steps.

I was forgotten.

The baby sat down. And smiled.