Perhaps We Should Touch Hands to Understand

I use to think of myself as a pretty good writer. Lying across the bed at home on West 2nd Street in Chester, Pa., I'd write down thoughts I felt I couldn't share with anyone.

Oftentimes I would write about one boy who occupied my mind most of the time along with the minds of many of the other girls in school. He was tall, handsome, smart and a starting forward on the varsity basketball team. But that’s a subject for another time.

As I think back on my tendency to lie across the bed and write, it was usually about boys and later men who continued to behave as though they were boys, without regard to the impact of their behavior on me.

When I think about the attention I've given those "boys" most of my life, I ask myself the question: "Why do I spend so much time focused on them?" Is it my gender? Does it have to do with the fact that I am single and unconsciously still searching for the one who will make my life all that I grew up thinking it should be, conditioned by society as I've been? Reflecting on “why didn't he call me back or when will I see him again?” I think, ultimately it has had to do with my soul’s searching: the journey that God assigned to me that would ultimately lead me to the answers.

I must admit that lately I've been quite content with my aloneness. I noticed this especially after recently dating a guy after only two weeks and cringing whenever I saw his number on my caller ID just before my favorite TV show was about to come on. I'd tell him I'd call him back but only did so out of obligation. Or after courageously admitting that I did not think it was going to work and feeling relieved and ready to celebrate when he accepted my decision with respectful humility; enjoying the peace and quiet of his absence within minutes of his leaving. Am I bad? Nope. Even in the short two weeks of dating him though, I missed the company of a man once he was history... missing the feeling I once shared of a male soul mate connection. As Richie Havens’s lyrics expressed in his album, Stonehenge, “Shouldn't All The World Be Dancing”, “perhaps we should touch hands to understand”. To me suggesting the soul's desire for human understanding and a universal soul's connection.

I never knew my father. The story is that my mother, who was deaf, was raped by a man she knew. A modern day date rape, as it were. The deaf community in the Bronx in the 50's was close knit and my Godmother told me that my mother had been at a party with friends including her when an acquaintance suggested they go to another party together. My mother went along and according to the story, was raped by him. Nine months later I was born and several years later, one summer, we drove from Chester, back to NY as we often did to visit my mother’s friends and our family. I was asleep in the back seat on my mother’s lap when we stopped at the intersection of 145th Street & 8th Avenue. Someone opened the backdoor and pulled on my arm. "You want to come with me?" The man asked as he tried to pull me out of the car. I frantically took refuge in the comfort of my mother's bosom. That was the 1st time I ever remember seeing this man, and the last. Was that him? My mother did not seem to object to his attempt at taking me out of the car which bewildered me. Sometimes I think back on that moment and wonder what was going through her mind. She used to get upset and angry whenever I would ask her who my father was and would go into a tirade about her integrity. Arms flailing, a shrilled sound coming from her throat, she would ask if I thought she was “cheap”. I didn’t know the word in sign language nor English until she taught me this word in this context. Fortunately, I’ve forgotten the sign for “cheap” which is symbolic in and of itself. That is a memory of my mother that I often think about that upsets me. To know that her own personal turmoil was trying to come to grips with her own view of herself. The consistent response I use to get from this question triggered a reaction from her, an emotional explosion that terrified me to the core. Feeling her pain, seeing her defensiveness and needing to somehow figure a way to protect her from her own self loathing, I would collapse into her arms in tears as my unspoken way of communicating that she was loved by me despite whatever turmoil was going on inside her soul. This is what it meant to be the child of my mother; unconditional love. I am her most ardent supporter (to no one in particular) and defender of her behavior towards me as a child to this day. She helped write the story I now share. I use to tell myself that all of the men in my life had abandoned me just as they had her, from father to grandfather to boy in high school to boy on college campus to lover to husband to boyfriend and on ... and yet I continue to write about them … in my mother’s and my defense.

Maybe that is the point. I have been fixated on the male human species because of what I have perceived as rejection from birth. I search for meaning from those who I have perceived as having no regard for my being. How many years of prayer, bible study, church, synagogue, buddhism, therapy, books, retreats, meditation, relationships … have I had to experience to come to this realization? Ultimately, God has answered my earnest, sincere prayers.

I’ve experienced a metamorphosis. I like that word. It gives me the visual of the man who woke up one day to find he was an insect. He struggled with his newly conscious physical state, attempting to hide from the world around him and eventually discovered that his state was a necessary step in his evolutionary process. God’s answers ...

A few careers that superficially defined me, divorced after 18 years of marriage, three babies, various relationships and years later, I again write about my thoughts on boys, men, husbands, sons, lovers ... fathers, the human male species in the hopes of continuing down this evolutionary process we call my life and enjoying epiphanies long overdue. Writing not so much about the opposite sex anymore as much as about those who I believed for way too long abandoned me, rejected me ... somehow allowing all of this to control me, ironically now helping me realize my true self has nothing to do with them at all but about me and my perception of myself. Unconditional Love. It's as simple as that.

I still enjoy a good song on the radio as I lie across the bed, writing my thoughts while the world goes by on the highway that was West 2nd Street. I’m in a much better place now ... Here’s to you Mommy. I love you.