headTalk.

We’re told to seek forgiveness from God for our own shortcomings.

We’re told God only gives us as much as we can handle.

What comfort is it to a 6-yr old child, used for sex, to be told God wouldn’t let it happen unless she could handle it?

When will God ask for our forgiveness?

I sit surrounded by the craftsmanship of my grandfather in a bedroom built for my mother.  I admire the skill and patience applied by hand to the joints and corners of a room that has undergone frequent improvements, transforming it from the years my mother spent here.  I try to imagine the teenage heart throbs pictured in posters above her bed.  Then I smile, realizing the transformation their faces, too, have undergone.  Names and faces I recognize these many years later as legends in entertainment.

I remember the walls as they were during my summers spent here as a child, my mother’s room becoming my own.  Covered not in posters, but in outdated, gray paneling.  I shared this room from time to time with cousins, siblings, companions and cowboys and Indians.  Aboard stagecoaches, rocket ships and pirate ships, our bunk beds served as passage to endless adventures and explorations.  Closing my eyes now, I can almost smell the freshly dug earth beneath the hoofs of the rocking horse which led the charge against marauding natives.

Opening my eyes, I expect to find a plastic cowboy hat and cap pistol in their place and my hand tightly clinched on a braided mane.  But I’m not on my rocking horse, instead I find a room much more suited for grandchildren, now grown, returning with lovers and children of their own.  I no longer find the company of imaginary landscapes and the dark, dated paneling is gone, replaced by bright, fresh paint trimmed by decorative crown molding.  Where rocking horses, bunk beds and toy chests once stood, sit delicate antique furniture arranged in a comfortable lounge.  Were I still a child, I’m sure the area with its lace tablecloths and silk throw pillows would be off-limits to my touch.

Over several decades this old room slowly gave way to modern accessories, giving up its relics one by one.  I no longer struggle in the dark waving hand over head searching for the string to turn on a single, exposed light bulb hanging from the ceiling.  It has been traded-up for a proper light switch convenient to the door and an energy-saving fixture mounted in its place.  I smile and wonder if my mother ever felt the dreaded sense of rush and adrenalin standing at the edge of the dark room.  Mustering the courage to leap from door to light switch hoping the light replaces shadows before feet hit the floor.  I also wondered if she ever had to stand facing my grandfather with broken chain in one hand and an apology in the other, as I did on more than one occasion.  His response was always the same, “You’re much too old for such behavior.”  Admittedly, I remained afraid of the dark in that room for several years until after installation of the new switch.

I smile again and dare myself now to take a peak at the shadows beneath the bed!

— Others in this series —
Traveling Home, part 1 “Our Woods, Our Adventures and Our Mountains”
Traveling Home, part 2 “My Grandmother”
Traveling Home, part 3 “If These Walls Could Talk”