Out From Under

Charlie Brown is at home goofing off after school one day, blissfully ignoring his chores.  He has high hopes that his mother will bring home a replacement for the kite that only yesterday – for the first time – swelled the ravenous belly of the deadly kite-eating tree.

But suppose Charlie Brown lives with a single mother, whose hidden violent tendencies are just beginning to surface — her buried ill-will rising to the occasion of her first drink too many?

When he hears his mother's footsteps on the stairs, he feels a slight twinge of fear seasoned with a pinch of guilt because the chores are not done.  But he rushes to the top of the staircase anyway, not knowing that his first lesson in the audacity of giving hope precedence over fear is climbing the stairs . . .

When his mother hits the landing, she glares at the mess in her apartment, hurls the kite at Charlie Brown and yells, "Here's your fucking kite, you lazy bastard!"  The impact of his mother's curse is delayed for an instant by his unbelieving ears — then the words pierce his heart as the kite clatters to the floor.  He picks up the kite slowly, hoping that his mother – now a strange marauder – will not notice that the wound inflicted is deep and hemorrhaging.

The kite stays in a corner of his closet.  The prospect of battling a kite-eating tree seems silly now, with a much more voracious opponent to contend with.  The dizzy dream of getting the kite to actually fly fades forever.

This anecdote is one from my own family, of course.  Afterwards, I hoped never to see this "mother?" arrive on the scene again.  But it would take surprisingly few appearances – by the Jekyll turned Hyde – for me to learn to equip myself with the interior armor necessary to survive her surprise attacks.

Within a matter of days, it seems, a sealed chamber was feverishly constructed around my incredulous heart, although the curses and blows delivered by my mother could still penetrate the fragile walls.  Since I never knew when my mother's explosions were coming, the chamber functioned primarily as a means of keeping its exuberant occupant from wandering around the treacherous mine-field that her home had become.  My heart's desire to be close to my mother (as all children wish to be close to their parents) was now blocked by my survival instincts. The prisoner could not budge; nor could he escape the sting of her arrows. Since the heart's vision is painfully acute, the unwilling prisoner had to close his eyes every time Hyde appeared on the face of his beautiful mother. The young victim and prisoner eventually fell into a deep sleep.

For children facing onslaughts of abuse and betrayal from their parents, or other authority figures, fantasy and pretense often become primary tools that work to suppress their real perceptions, thoughts and feelings regarding the real pain, shame and terror of the situation, which they must now ignore and repress in order to survive.

I started first to pretend that I was a "strong" person; secondly I began to pretend that nothing was really important to me.

In the first case, I was motivated to believe that I was indeed strong enough to withstand my mother's attacks because her outbursts added up to most of the attention I received from her. A child will often have to devise some means to live with and settle for negative attention when little else is available; this negative attention gives the impression, at least, that the parent knows the child is alive.

My capacity to woodenly withstand any amount of heat and abuse my mother could dish out eventually became a matter of personal pride.  My role-playing reached its peak as a teenager, when I had to become the hero responsible for preventing several "suicide attempts" carried out by my mother, presumably because she had wasted her entire life since the day she "flushed me out" (a poetic allusion to my birth).  In other words, since I (the hero!) wasn't amounting to much in her eyes, she had no choice but to kill herself.

The false bravado I had to muster in order to survive on the battlefield at home was not very useful anywhere else. I became a walking wall of stoic silence, apparently unaffected by anything.

When the fear of disappointment became the hidden king of my inner life, I started to pretend that nothing mattered.  All wishes, hopes, and even thoughts were first brought before this imposter king, who ordered the supplicants off to the dungeon, where they huddled around the sleeping form of their banished prince.  A little wish was too dangerous an interloper in the mind of one who's pretending to be brave; hopes were too easily trampled and squashed, leaving a mess that left no doubt there was cause for real terror.  Any thoughts meandering down the path that led to feelings of hope, or dreams and wishes, were shot on sight before their seditious plans were laid.

So my daily diet of one pretense after another served well to suppress even the simplest hopes and dreams, while also ensuring a tight lid be kept on all the slowly accumulating frustration, pain and sorrow.

After leaving home, I continued my inherited profession of settling for next to nothing.  I "chose" a career as a house painter (no one really needed college). I also "chose" and married an insecure young girl, making it easy for me to assume the role of the strong, quiet husband.  This passed as happiness for seventeen years.  Since I had become so accustomed to swallowing bowls of hot lava soup served by my mother, I assumed that the lukewarm pea-soup mush I had settled for was finer food, if not the only food available.  The one who could recognize real (even gourmet!) food was still snoring fitfully in the dungeon . . .

How does a sleeping prince wake up?  With the help of a princess, of course!  When I met her, she was in disguise, as a forty-two year old, graying single mother and artist.  Although she almost instantly recognized my condition, she couldn't let on right away.  Her daughter and mine were friends, so we saw each other occasionally, chatting idly about life and family.  Her questions about my past and family were oddly non-intrusive.  Her countenance of inner grace and easy familiarity suggested that she had been my best friend since the day I was born. 

During our conversations, her sincere expressions were like jeweled daggers seeking to break through the layers of pretense that I hardly knew existed.  It seems a small chink had been left in the wall of the dungeon after all; every penetrating bejeweled glance from the princess in disguise landed perfectly – chipping away at the breach – letting in a little more fresh air.  Once the opening in the chamber was large enough, she abandoned her disguise and aimed the full radiance of her gaze on the face of the sleeping prince.  But he did not awaken immediately.

He started mumbling in his sleep…something about kites and suicide attempts.  It took him months to get the whole story out — the truth about the unbearable pain of his childhood abuse, the shame of all his pretense, the years wasted in a dead-end career and marriage.  Finally, the volcano of rage and misery, suppressed for so many years – suddenly erupted – and down came the walls of the dungeon with such a crash, it frightened even the princess for a minute.

Once outside, the barely awakened prince fell into the arms of his adoring friend and soul-mate.  They are now married and living happily ever after.  He counts himself a very lucky man indeed.  But with his eyes now open to all the ills of the world, he tries to sneak in a little nap now and then.  But his wife is always peeling the covers off his head – since she lives instinctively by these words from Thomas Hardy: "If a way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst."

The prince is currently preoccupied with assimilating some of the Worst as best he can, while recovering on a steady diet of real food for thought.  So it's only a matter of time before he will, no doubt, remember to ask, "Just where did I leave that kite?"