With so many changes in one short lifetime, keeping up was not easy.  How does a child know what is real versus what is fantasy or fiction? Regardless always act like you know what is happening. That was what my little girl mind came up with all on her own.

Listen carefully, listen very carefully to each and every word.  Listen to the likes and dislikes of those adults or children around us.  Form conclusions based on all evidence, all input up until that particular moment.  Form beliefs, sometimes so strong seemingly nothing will break them.  The day will come when that thought or belief is challenged and the question slips into the back of your mind “where did I learn that?”.  Normally, it’s just this is what I believe and this is the way it is…. but suddenly a situation will cause us to question each and every thought, every single belief and behavior.

One such concrete belief was expelled years later as I heard myself telling it to someone else, as if it were carved in stone.  As a young child, I had the nervous habit after Mommy died; twisting the ends of my hair and putting them in my mouth.  Going into the third and fourth grade Nanny would tell me to take that hair out of my mouth.  It never seemed like anything urgent, until the day came when she told me “you can get worms from chewing on your hair” !!!!   I don’t think I ever put my hair in my mouth again and the thought consumed my little mind.  How on earth did the worms develop from just hair.  Another mystery of life I guess.  At the age of 18 I found myself telling my roommate to take that hair out of her mouth or she is going to get worms !!   “WHAT” she replied …carefully I explained how the worms would develop inside her once her hair was mixed with her saliva.  It all sounded unbelievable to even me at the time; but I was willing to go to war over that belief.  Soon thereafter, common sense and humiliation took over and I conceded that is probably was not possible for a worm to be born from simply hair mixed with saliva.  A belief I had held tightly for as long as I had lived and now I find out the truth.  What other beliefs, values or morals that make me who I am are possibly wrong?  What if they are all wrong?

Not long after my mother passed away, my Nanny had a horrible accident.  I was at school, she was home with my younger brother.  He was to young to be in kindergarten yet.  For some reason she lost her patience with him and slammed the glass milk bottle on the table (that is what I was later told).  I had no idea what had happened when I entered the house after walking home from school.  While entering the house a weary feeling came over me, it was incredibly quiet.  What happens to a child when all she see’s is blood everywhere, when no one is there to give any explanation or hold onto.  Blood all over the floor, the walls and leading all the way to the back door.  The trail led to the neighbors back yard, a small gate attached our yards together.  As Aunt Rosie saw me from inside her house she came running out.  They had meant to meet me before I entered the house.

Nanny was in the hospital and would be for sometime while the doctors tried to save her right hand, which had gone through the milk bottle.  The neighbors had my brother and we were to stay with them until Nanny got back home.  I was going to have to be her “helper”, her nurse, the cleaning lady, the laundry lady, the girl who cooked dinner, who ironed, who cleaned the house. No more baseball for me, except what I watched from the windows as I looked outside at the other children playing.  Nanny wasn’t angry or mean, it might have been easier if she was, but she was nothing but grateful, loving and kind.  It saddened her so to not be able to do the chores or care for us.  It didn’t matter I told her, I could do it all.  That is the lesson I took with me through the years, I could do it… I had to do it.

While life is happening and preparing us for a future we know nothing about, it is so easy to get lost or fight the process.  When your entire world falls apart in moments, it becomes a reality that life as you know it, can not be trusted.  What can be trusted is change, unfairness, loss, confusion and a loneliness that seems to cut like a knife.  Who read the script on how to behave; what to do and what not to do? How does everyone else seemingly know what to do and how to behave?.  Questions that sometimes haunt us and demand answers.  What happens is life, it is what it is, Life.  What a great gift we have been given, this life of ours. Yet, it is this very gift that often causes the most confusion and questions.  What now?  Our eyes can only see that which is tangible.  Can we see love, loss, humiliation, gratitude, fear, strength, courage or complete astonishment at the beauty around us?  We feel them and what I learned to do from that very young age was put up a protective shield around me.  Don’t ever show what is inside.  Where that rule came from was straight rock bottom fear.  Knowing what it is doesn’t always dissipate or dissolve it or even weaken it sometimes.

What we don’t know is we are being prepared for something else.  Something down the road that we have not been able to see yet.  We are not allowed to know what that is or what it looks like.  If we were I promise you I certainly would have opted out on more than one occasion!  When Nanny got home from the hospital her right had was wrapped up in what looked like a boxing glove. They had reconnected her had and it would take a long time to heal and be functional again, if ever.   Cooking lessons quickly began and Nanny would sit in a chair in the middle of our small kitchen and give me instructions, step by step, in order to prepare dinner for the three of us.  Playing outside became a thing of the past the only baseball I would see was from looking out the window, as the other neighborhood kids played.  There were so many more important things that had to be done and Nanny could no longer do them.  She was very lucky but very weak and her strengthening exercises were daily.  As the bandage came off I would try to squeeze a small rubber ball in her hand, she could not grip it but what she could touch she was to squeeze again and again.  After months of rehabilitation she was finally able to get the rubber ball into her had, ever so slightly and squeeze.  I enjoyed being her nurse and feeling like I was needed and that I was helping.  She never complained as I tried to bath her and help her dress.  Soon my seventh and eighth birthdays would roll around and I had become a master at cooking, ironing, cleaning, laundry and grocery shopping.  Climbing into the back of the large black marathon taxi to go to the grocers was the most fun; I felt so grown up.  I was growing up, faster than my years.  What happens to a childhood when the situation forces the child to go inside and send out the adult?

All through growing up I had the idea that my life was not normal.  How abnormal I didn’t know.  That thought and belief formed in the head of a small child would go with me for decades.  The belief that I was different, special and sad I carried for decades.  The morbid self pity I wallowed in became very comfortable and predictable.   It began to grow in me as if it had a life of it’s own, though it was not at all pretty.  Pushing it back down deep inside me was becoming more and more difficult.  At a very young age the anger would spill out and overflow like coffee spilling out past the rim of the cup, burning everything it touched.  It was becoming evident especially to me that something was wrong.  But what was it and how could I fix it?  I must fix it, I fix everything; or at very least, make it looked fixed.  Little bursts of anger would explode in me and spill out.  I would lash at; unfortunately at the only one I could bare to at the time, my dear little brother.  He took the brunt of the emotions I had no idea how to heal or hide.  Fighting with my brother was becoming common and only because I was bigger would I always win.  There were times when I really hurt him. My little brother; no idea what was in his little mind and how confused and afraid he must have been.  The world had become unpredictable and dangerous for him; very often being hurt by the only one he had left, the only one he was suppose to trust; his big sister.  The shame I felt from this went all the way to adulthood with me but it would certainly not be my only shame.

The decision had been made and we would be moving to Florida sooner rather than later.  Though I am not quite sure who made that decision, I am sure that I would not let up on my Nanny about the subject until it was set in stone.  All the boxes were packed, the movers were coming and we had our airline tickets.  Nanny, my brother and I were moving to a new place, Florida.  No one knew me in Florida, no one knew how different I was; we were.  I was so excited to start this new life, this new and exciting chapter.  Moving to a place with no sadness, no dark memories only warmth and sunshine.  Moving day came, it happened to be on my eleventh birthday, as usual, my brother and I got into a disagreement before we left for the airport.  I pulled back my right arm with all my might and punched as hard as I could, aiming for his head.  He swiftly ducked to the right just as my fist was entering through the drywall, exactly where he was sitting.  My rage was building, though I had no method of coping with it or releasing it.  I kept that part of me hidden pretty well from the neighbors and relatives before we moved.  To them (as far as I knew) I was the good girl who helped with everything and got the honor roll in school each semester.  The awards for Good Merit, Good Citizenship, Friendliness and Teamwork were the solid proof, I was a good girl.  Of course, I was beginning to know deep inside that was a reputation I did not deserve.

Crossing over that seemingly endless bridge felt like heaven.  The water so calm in the Bay, the seagulls swirling overhead and palm trees for as far as the eye could see. Yes, we were in a new land.  What I did not know as I experienced that utopia was that soon it would be an endless tornado of hell.  Soon the heat of the summer would not only burn my brothers feet, but burn my soul as well.  Entering a new world without coping skills or a briefing on how difficult the terrain would be never entered my young mind.  I was swept away in the moment of happiness and freedom the sun gave us.  My brother and Nanny could feel it too, we were all smiles and happy to be together in this new foreign land.  We only had each other here, we knew only Aunt Dot’s mother and father, who kept mostly to themselves.  Our lives would start over,  just the three of us; and this go around would be great.