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the road to my salvation
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Still, I remained loyal; call it the curse of a Cancer Moon, but I clung desperately to the three people in this world that I knew were mine. She was one of them. In spite of the fact that she locked us in the closet to spend time with her boyfriend. In spite of the fact that she would let him pop the door open unexpectedly and scream at us. (An almost demonic look of delight on his face when we jumped.) In spite of all of these things, I still loved her, remained attached and protecting. Such a pity that the loyalty began and ended with me.
We did other things when she wasn't around, my sister, my brother and I. Dougie was still so little, he probably doesn't remember much, but Marie and I remember. Ask her sometime. She'll tell you about how I set fire to that shed and the firemen came. Shaking like a leaf, I can't believe they didn't cuff my mother right then and there. But those were different times, and the authorities didn't respond to signs of neglect the way they do now. No, the fireman just made me promise a solemn promise not to play with fire again. It was a promise that I would break repeatedly throughout my life. Who's to tell a young boy what's wrong and what's right when there's noone around? What's right is what's interesting and what's painful is what isn't. Being alone was painful. Being hungry was painful. Fire? That was interesting. So were the airplanes.
Those I remember too. A pleasant bit that had been all but forgotten. The big kids taught us about the airplanes. They were the wind-up kind made of balsa wood and plastic. You know, the kind with the landing gear? They showed us how to take back soda bottles and use the deposit money to buy one. They were the most amazing things I had seen up to that time, and remain a pleasant thing to this day. Shiny red propeller and wheels. If you wound them up just right, they'd take off from the ground and sooooar. Oh how they sailed into the sky, taking me with them each time. Away from dark closets and screaming strangers. Away from hunger so hard it made you want to eat the chapstick that a stranger had left behind in a dirty ashtray. When those toy airplanes flew, they were beyond pain, beyond fear, beyond loneliness and so was I. So why do I only recall flying them for one afternoon? Why do the rest of those bits and pieces seem so dingy and winceful?
I'd chalk it up to selective memory, but I've always been an optimist. "Things will be alright." "Nothing else bad is going to happen." "Mom's going to get better." "It could be worse." Looking for the silver lining becomes a diversionary survival tactic when you're trying to cope with a reality that's more suited to sweeping little girls from their Kansas homes. I had a brother and sister to care for. I had a mother to mother. I had a little boy's sanity to think of and I'd like to think that if I hadn't kept my chin up all of those years, things could have been much worse.
Who knew that the bits and pieces of a little boy's shattered childhood would someday hold a key to changing the world? Some of the greatest miracles humanity has ever known aren't carved from stone, you know. They are glued together, piece by piece from the bits and the pieces that others throw away.
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