I took a break from the bloggy. I just spent the last 3 weeks traveling all over the southeast portion of our nation. Our original plan was to just go to Florida to see my kids, but then my best friend's wedding was something new to the calendar that I just could not miss. Then I got an invitation from just one of my favorite cousins to come to the family Christmas on my mother's side. I had to go. It was wonderful. I saw people with whom I share a bloodline that I had not seen since my grandmother died in 1994. It was so crazy and so wonderful. We stayed for a week with my incredibly gracious grandmother on my dad's side - my Nannie. I love that woman. She is the epitome of what a survivor looks like. The day may come when I ghost write a post here from her, but, until then, just know - she's tenacious as I could ever dream of being. She's where I learned it.
Ironically enough, she lives in the house that my dad grew up in. I've already told you of the pain and horror he endured there. Trust. She endured her own, and she came out standing. She's tough, and I love her for it, and I was able to sit at her kitchen table and tell her that. She's a hero of mine for sure.
Being in that house was an interesting experience for me. I have only been in it a handful of times. The last time I was there, I was pregnant with my oldest child. My dad was actually with me. We were visiting my mom's sister who was dying of cancer. My parents, my little brother and little sister and me and my big pregnant belly drove from Tennessee to Arkansas to see her, so naturally, we were going to see my dad's family. They all still live in the same town.
I watched my dad stand in the same kitchen from his childhood and throw arm punches and make fart jokes with his little brother while my mom and his mom just rolled their eyes, and we all giggled. I didn't really have time during that short visit to meditate on where I was and what had happened there. To be fair, I was also not aware of many things at that point. There was a lot my dad told me after that visit. It's strange. We all feel like, during the last year or so leading up to the day that my dad took his last breath, that he had "important" conversations with us. We all say that it's like something in him knew......so we had these talks. Some of these talks for me included hearing more about his childhood.
For this visit, I knew these things. I walked through the back door of my Nannie's house and found her in the living room. She looked just the same to me. I swear that woman hasn't aged a day since the last time I saw her. We hugged, and I got teary. I whispered in her ear that the last time I was in that house, I was with my dad. "STOP! Live in THIS moment, Sarah! Have happy memories! Don't make her relive that pain!", I mentally chided myself. But I ended up having so, so many questions. I will never know how my grandmother endured my days worth of questions about really painful times. I suppose that, because she is a survivor, she understands within herself that, like my dad, she doesn't have to let the pain of the past hurt her ever again. Gracious, though. She was so gracious to educate me on the details of some of the bad parts, but here's the great thing she did. She also told me sweet stories about my dad when he was tiny.
One of the most precious was when she took him to go get his first pair of glasses. She was a very young girl from very little places. They lived in Forrest City, Arkansas, and the adventure to get her baby his glasses took her to the "big city" of Memphis. "I was so terrified", she told me. "I'd never been to a big city like that." Still, this fiery little 22 year old girl hopped a bus with her 18 month old little guy and made that trip. When they arrived, she found them a place to eat and ordered them a hamburger to share. She set tiny Danny's portion in front of him for him to eat. He picked up the sandwich and held it close to his blindish little eyes and shook his head and uttered "Bucks". and set in back down on the table. From what I understand, he actually did this a couple times. Either way, he had decided that he was not about that hamburger because it was covered in "bucks".......the sesame seeds on the bun. They looked like bugs to him. This sweet little momma proceeded to pick every last one of those seeds OFF the bun so her little guy could eat a "clean" sandwich!!!! ....."bucks". Oh Dad. You were cute. You were always cute - until the day you died, you were cute.
I was glad for the respite of the pleasantness of these stories because the heaviness of the hard stories were, indeed, incredibly heavy. It was hard to hear the stories of my grandfather and how he caused so much pain. It was hard to hear about them because of what it did to my dad and his mom and the other kids, but it was also hard because I saw innumerable parallels. I had traveled the journey of abusive relationships. It has been a long road. Anyone who has traveled that path understands. Anyone that hasn't doesn't. That's just how it goes. If you don't understand, please don't judge our choices and please count yourself lucky every day that you live. It's a weird world. As my Nannie was telling these stories, there were so many that, as she was talking, I had memories - not projected memories. I wasn't envisioning what they all must have felt or said or seen. I was remembering.....she was talking and I saw my face staring back at someone else's. I saw familiar faces in the room - not my dad's and his siblings.
This was a weird experience for me. In my guided therapy, we have not even TOUCHED my adult life. We're still in my childhood. I always felt that my childhood was relatively happy. There were things that caused me pain and confusion, but I would never really say that entire era of my life was generally painful or confusing. My adult life, on the other hand..........that's a different story, and these bits of knowledge reminded me of that. They also cemented in my mind and heart that I did the right thing by leaving, by getting help, by speaking up for myself.
I sat across the table or across the room from my Nannie and story swapped, and, for a few moments, we weren't grandmother and granddaughter. We were women.......and we were survivors. I looked at her through teary, impassioned eyes and said "You did the work! You women in your generation did the work. You blazed the trail for us. Before, women were just expected to stay and endure these terrible things. There was no option of leaving until you girls, and you specifically, decided that you had to stand up for yourselves. You opened the door that we now get to walk through. I can't tell you how much that means to me. I can't ever tell you how thankful I am that you chose to do that. It rescued ALL of us.". I hope beyond hope that I did not cause her pain. I hope beyond hope that she realizes what a seed of healing she planted by being so transparent with me.
As I walked through that house, I have to tell you that I saw and heard ghosts (not literally, but let me tell you, the figurative ghosts are even more a force to be reckoned with than the paranormal kind). I saw pictures that I'd never seen before. I'd begun to understand it all in a way that I had not before. Some of them were very sad. Some of them were not, but one instance stood out in my memory. It had dwelt there, at the front of my mind, from the moment I'd first heard the story......of Madame Butterfly and the beauty and hope of the songs therein. I knew what I had to do. My dad had gone back to that time and rescued the little boy, but the only time the walls of that room had heard the muted notes through the makeshift earphones was during a time of sadness. I felt incredibly compelled to play it again - to give it a new history.....so that is what I did.
On my last night in that house, I pulled up the recording of Maria Callas singing the aria. I entered the dark room and, with my own set of headphones (actually Dan's), I sat down on the floor in the dark, and I let the music play. I closed my eyes and felt.....every....note. I spoke to that boy. I know. Weird, but I did it either way. I told him again that he was safe and that it was okay. I imagined holding that little boy in my lap and smoothing back his wavy blonde hair and hugging him so tight. I felt something in that room during the playing of that song. I can't describe it. I just felt it, and I knew that I'd closed a chapter. I'd played the very music that had played long ago, but this time was different and every day hereafter could be different. Now there could be comfort. Now there could be closure. Now there could be healing. Now there could be restoration and endless, beautiful hope.........now there could be beauty.........for him........but also for me.
I imagined myself comforting that little boy, but I would be so remiss if I did not tell you that I could nearly feel my dad's arms around me....comforting me. It was like our souls dwelt in the room together for the time it took to play the aria but not just two people. It was all of us....it was every version of the two of us - every phase of life was in that room together and we all comforted each other. We all wept together. I could only feel my own tears as they streamed down my cheeks, but I could feel them being swept off my skin by the spirit of everything my dad...that little boy......chose to do with the things that had brought him the most pain. He chose to heal....and so I could also choose to heal. I have to tell you that this experience was one of the most intense of my life, and I will never forget it. I returned to the walls of his pain....and to the walls of mine.
There was no breaking down of the walls in those moments. I knew that could come later. There was just the being there together. Even if it was nowhere except in my own wishful thinking and emotions, we were there together. The music had been played again, but this time just for the sake of beauty. It wasn't drowning anything out. It wasn't covering up anything. It wasn't providing escape.....it was just beautiful.
I don't know what to do with that experience or the ones in that house preceding that. That is where I feel a bit stuck. I will ask for guidance about what to do next with the exposure of wounds that were so deep that their hideousness caused me to push them back and hide them well. For now, I feel them, and I look at them. I have to feel now that they are no longer hideous. Their nature was ugly, but they do not make me ugly. They cannot putrify the beauty of what I can be. I can be whole. I can be beautiful.....just like the music.
There were so many things that I have known for a long while that I must address. The thing with doing all this learning about my own past and the past of those who came before me is that I have now uncovered even more. It is painful. It does, indeed feel so ugly....for right now, but one day someone will need to come in and play the song of my pain, and they will need for it to have beauty. That is what I will try to provide. That is the thing towards which I will work. I will work long and hard, and I will ask for a lot of help, and then it will become a thing of beauty....this thing of the song of my pain.....my aria......my Madame butterfly.
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