Section 1 - Chapter 4 -Strong Children and Broken Men

This was going to start as a chapter continuing the story of my childhood. I think that it will fall in line with what it is that I want to say, what I need to pour onto these pages to remove the self inflicted misery I find myself in. I was going to begin to speak of a great man that has always played the most important role in my life, and only recently, have I found that void missing in my life. I want to write about this person, and leave my perceptions of the mark he left for me forever to be read by those who were not lucky enough know him. In order to do this, I will need a larger portion of this tale. I think I want to share a little bit about the relationships I have had with the men that have been present in my life up to this point. Some have been very temporary yet important, others, I cannot have enough time and regret not knowing them sooner in their life or in mine. I regret not being older, earlier in their lives.

There have been a few men in my life that have impacted it in a way that has shaped me, whether it was through their words and their actions or the way that they chose to live their lives. Often I find myself thinking about what they would do when facing some difficult task or seemingly insurmountable challenge, yet I cannot help but think that they would have never gotten themselves into the situations I face too often. In turn, I find myself emulating what it is I think that they are, perhaps I put them on a pedestal, or feel that they are infallible, an image and ideal to aspire to.  As I think about it now I realize that this very well could have had a negative impact o my development. That I am not my own man, I have possibly become a poor photocopy of the men I grew up idolizing, piecing together all the parts of them that I valued without ever allowing myself to develop my own moral code, the ways to work through my issues. I am correct in thinking that they would have never had to face the problems I face, because who they are, would have never led them into the situations and if they did face these issues they would be ill equipped to process them. So now I am left with the realization that emulating the men I respect has failed. 

Frederick Douglass was quoted saying that "It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." Looking at my life and where I am now, I can say that the man was on to some very wise thoughts. It makes me wonder what it is that should happen when the building of a strong child fails? Is it even fair to a child to build them into anything other than who they are to become? And what then? Some of the most successful men I know didn't earn the life they live. Do they even know that? Are they introspective enough to know that the shiny new model cars they drive, the 4 bedroom pre-fabricated half mansion filled with tiny replicas of themselves are potentially the product of their parents failing to raise strong children? That their education was possibly a success of them being able to focus on education, frat parties, and binge drinking because their family had the foresight to make sure there education was paid for and they didn't have to become distracted by trivial things like working while in college for trivial things lie food and shelter. That the unpaid internship that landed them that, undaunted by school loans, first glorious job was handed to them by someone else hard work? Or that lovely first "starter house" that was bought for them around the time that they decided that they had better marry before they were too worn or too fat to find anything better wasn't actually earned by their hard work in college? Evidence of this is everywhere, it is shown by the straight "A" student that lives in a run down two bedroom apartment struggling to pay their student loans while relying on their fantastical work history of grocery store cashiering that they chose instead of the unpaid internship at the local law firm because they had bills to pay. They don't have houses, or shiny cars, however they worked hard if not harder in school to succeed, where are their "starter houses"?

There was a man in my life, early on, that attempted to help my family build me into a well rounded, strong child. I called him Uncle, although he was not related to me in any way an Uncle typically is. He was a very good friend of my grandparents, and he was, by all accounts, an amazing individual. He had overcome some very insurmountable things in his life time, and often I had the opportunity to interact with him and attempt to learn some of the things that he had to teach. His place in this world was no less than astounding and, if I can, I will attempt to give him a descriptive title that will explain the role he filled in this world, see if you can follow this. He was an a former priest, who received special dispensation, (honorably discharged), to leave the church to become a psychiatrist who studied as the last private student of Sigmund Freud. A man who had private correspondence with Jean Paul Sartre, helped jews escape from Nazi concentration camps and made a name for himself in Canada, running a boys school where he used his knowledge and skills de-programming Nazi youth. This man, who had done more in his life was for me, at an early age, a confidant, an ally in a world I struggled to understand.

I am told that I was a "deep" child. I was very particular about silly things that boys tend to never give any thoughts to. For example, I needed to comb my hair when I woke up, parted on the left and swooping off to the right, my thick hair in a fashion that I saw in pictures of those that came long before me. I never was one to use my hands at the dinner table, a knife and fork were my tools when most other children were still enjoying the fact that they could wear their bibs and watch frustrated parents constantly lower themselves and rise, picking up food that was thrown to the floor in delight. I had a favorite corner of my light green blanket. The satin that lined the edges of the soft cotton blanket came together in one of the corners in a way that it could be flipped back and forth creating a small cup one way, and flipped to do the same on the other. It was such a tiny detail, but each night I still remember running my hands down the edges of the blanket to each corner of it until it was found and only then I could fall asleep. When other children were still taking medicine out of measure plastic spoons, I was swallowing pills if only to avoid the horrible taste that liquid medicine delivered. I was also very in tune with my emotions, I didn't ever know why, but when I was sad, upset, (I now know it was depression) I would seek the help of my family. I would utter one of two things, I would say, "serious talk time" or the one phrase I can only imagine my family was concerned to hear, "My soul is sick". At the mere mention of my soul, a call was usually played to my Uncle in Canada, and a few weeks later he would appear in an old beat up Tornado that took up the entire front drive way of my grandparents house. Phone calls were attempted, but as I learned as an adult, I did not like speaking on the phone, to this day I think it is even more impersonal than a text message.

My uncle would sit with me after he had settled in and relaxed a bit from his long drive with my family. He never flew anywhere, and I would imagine fantastical things he did as he traveled from this extremely distant point of origination. We would talk, and share events together. I am not sure what it was that I had going on in my life, but he listened intently to everything I had to say, most likely searching for some sort of sign as to the reason for his visit. We would talk about my mom, my brother, my grandparents even my great grandmother who often watched my brother and I during the day time. I remember these times with him, sitting in the small addition my grandfather had built onto their ranch home. Lights out, the sunlight filtering in through the window, sometimes I would be on his lap other times I would sit next to him. He was a large man to me then, pocked with marks on his nearly bald head, hooked nose and thin rimmed glasses. I always felt safe when we spoke, like whatever was going on in my head would be resolved. The other feelings I had during these talks, sometimes hours on end, were a fear I could not explain and also frustration. I was always so angry at myself for allowing the things that I wished to share with him to escape my vocabulary. As I tried to explain what was happening in my heart, in my being, my words would fail and I think that he continually boiled things down to the incident or the hole left in my life by my father. It upset me that it always led back to man I didn't often think of unless he was brought up, or there were plans, which often fell through, to get a visit from him.

The truth was, I was having dreams, recurring dreams, that I have to this day. They plagued my sleep and as a child I could never even come close to describing them to someone else. Even as I write this, I get flashes of the memory of these dreams, yet I could never hope to express them simply. I have tried over and over to describe them, and most likely I will attempt to share them with you, but at this stage it was just impossible. As I aged a bit and had many of these talks, with my uncle, my grandparents, my mother I finally resigned myself to the fact that because so many horrible things had been inflicted on my family by my father that they could not see past the fact that it was not what was torturing me as they believed. I learned to keep these dream sequences to myself, and I learned my very first bad habit as a man. To allow those who cared about me, to think that I was perfectly wonderful when in fact the agony raging inside my mind was almost easier to deal with than the frustration of my inability to explain myself be attributed to man that I wanted no part of. So I learned to smile every time I hurt and felt lost. I still smile more than anyone has a right to, to this day.