About Those Meanies Who Made You Cry...
God Saw You. He was There. (Part two of the Damnable Lie of Being Unseen Series)
When Mom was at the apex of her Alzheimer’s “excursion,” she once said to me, “You know, I had something going on….” I knew what she meant. I could have been somebody. I had talent. I had something going on. But no one saw me.
Here are some basics in my imaginary Damnable Lie of Being Unseen Workshop:
Your belief (or fear) that you are unseen is a rouse. It’s a lie.
In order for you to understand this lie you have to get to know God.
When you understand that God is good and that He sees all and that he loves you, you will begin to understand that your being unseen is an impossibility because He created you to be loved and to be seen – by Him.
The world is a façade, a fake wall that looks real and alluring, convincing you that nothing and no one can break through and that you need its grand approval.
God doesn’t do façade.
So you have a choice: 1) Live striving to be seen by a world that will never be able to feed your hunger. 2) Live knowing that you need do nothing to deserve being loved because you are already seen and loved (regardless of any idiotic choices you make.)
God uses loving individuals in our lives to remind us He sees us. (That isn’t to say He doesn’t use…say… Netflix. But it’s less likely – much less. I just don’t like to box in the Holy Spirit.)
These are my rude basics. My rough outline. What Mom didn’t know – ultimately. There were moments of awakening. Moments where the Spirit saw her through her children, (ie “Mom you are so beautiful”), or someone sent to knock some sense back into her, to get her back on the Path.
Mom took ballet when she was a girl. I believe that she loved it. There is a sepia picture, somewhere out there, of Mom in point shoes, en relevé, lifting up butterfly wings attached to her arms, lifting them up up up above her head. Sort of akin to Isadora Duncan. And I’ve seen paintings Mom painted. She could also be caught occasionally in the living room of my (great) grandmother’s house trying to remember chords she’d learned as a child on the piano. I have heard her sing softly, privately, to me. Oh, that you could have heard that rich low contralto.
By the time I’d arrived, Mom had four children and she took me on to boot. (As time passes and I get older I hear more and more stories of grandparents who raised their grandchildren in secret.) So it doesn’t surprise me that when I showed some desire to perform and had some talent - and that it made me happy - well, for Mom, point B from A was but a skip.
A Story about Ms. Renee, The Pock-Marked Tap Teacher
I loved tapping. Mom had me take lessons from the recreation center. I remember the sunlight streaming in the windows in the late afternoon after school. Bright enough to not turn on the overhead lights but dark enough to see the rays bounce in off the wooden floor. The dance bar was above my shoulder.
The teacher’s name was Renee and she had rough skin. Some pock marks. Or perhaps just big pores. She had a mound of brown frizzy hair she’d pull back in a low pony tail. There was something about her that scared me. And though I loved my tap shoes, I did not love being taught by her. One day, for no particular reason on her part other than she seemed “mean”, I burst into full on horizontal tears in a long line of little girls at the bar.
And that scared me more. Because among the twenty other little girls, I was the only one crying and I was certain this would not go down well for me.
But something quite unexpected happened.
Tap Teacher Renee rushed in, swooped me up into her arms, and took me into the bathroom. I remember us in front of the mirror. I am, at this point, a little too big to carry anymore, my taps dangling down past her thighs. She pulled down those brown folded cardboard-esque paper towels to dry my tears. I remember them being rough against my cheeks. I don’t remember what she said, but she’d suddenly become a wholly different human - comforting me. After that, I am sure we must have gone back to class with things “all better.”
I told Mom the whole story relaying what Scary Renee did and how surprised I was.
Mom knowingly smiled. “She was afraid she was going to get into trouble.” Well, that never occurred to me. Mom may have been right. She had a great discernment of spirits when she wasn’t assuming the worst. But oftentimes she was. So we’ll never know. But I think she must have sensed that Renee was, indeed, a little on the mean side for her to have responded that way.
That wasn’t just a one-off experience. I was that kid that always cried when Mommy (either one of them) left.
I mean, c’mon. Are you surprised? I was born. Mommy left. Even though I was blessed to “have” her in my life. She was always leaving. I was scared. Of what? Abandonment. Rejection. Though classic the well nevertheless runs deep. And Mom (Grandmom. Well, both of them)… there was a lot going on. “Grandmom Mom” was afraid of all those things, too. The abandonment and rejection. So she drank. But we’ll get into that another time.
The Day We Both Cried at Kindergarten
My first day of Kindergarten I held Mommy’s hand as we walked around the corner to a long empty hallway. Again, that light was streaming in the windows, bouncing off the linoleum floor. I saw a lady helping up a little boy to a tall water fountain. There were some little steps for the little ones. Then she walked him into the class room.
A moment later she walked back out and warmly smiled to Mom and me. Next thing I knew Mom was walking away! I looked back and the tears began to flood the hallway. It was raining everywhere, seeping through the cracks of the lockers; water rising from the linoleum seams.
And then the craziest thing happened.
That same nice lady, Mrs. E., walked me to that same tall water fountain. “Would you like a drink of water?” and helped me up the little stairs for a long cool drink. And I knew immediately that the little boy before me cried, too, and now it was my turn. And you know what? That little boy would later teach me on the chalkboard how to draw a star. What are the chances?
Later in life I relayed this story of the water fountain to Mom. She told me that she remembered that day so well and that she’d hesitated in the hallway as Mrs. E. escorted me to the water fountain. But Mrs. E. quickly waved her away while I wasn’t looking. It would only make it harder.
Mom told me she walked outside onto the front sidewalk of the school, stopped – and cried. Thinking on that today breaks my heart for her. She thought she was alone.
I was the last one for her. The last drop off. The last Kindergarten.
There would be no one at home. What would she do? She would drink. Again, a story for another time.
First Grade and Crying Over Big Words
In first grade, Mrs M. was – well, let’s put it this way – not good with children. Especially the “cryers”. So what better profession to enter in than teacher of young children! I tried desperately to hold the tears in. But because I was so afraid of her, I failed miserably. I wanted to be home so badly and regularly bawled my eyes out every morning around 8am.
One day, in Reading Circle, we each had to read a paragraph out loud, and I counted around the circle to see which paragraph would end up being mine. I quickly found that the paragraph I would have to read had a BIG WORD in it that I couldn’t figure out and my first full on panic attack began to rise within me with each slow long slog of a child trying to get through their prospective assignments. To combat the mounting anxiety I held my breath – literally – with dramatically blown out cheeks. That’s how I tried to keep myself from crying. A little boy across from me mocked me by blowing out his cheeks too.
By the time my turn came round I could barely get started when the dreaded tears began to flow….
“Are you crying?” threatened Mrs. M. “Are you CRYING?!” She stood up and placed her hand on my head and shook it back and forth exclaiming something about, you got it, not crying in her class. I remember there being a certain rhythm to the jerks of my head with her exclamation “You. Will. Not. Cry. In. My. Class!” [jolt, jolt, jolt]
Can we all just take a moment to silently consider how many problems there are going on at once in her choices? I’ll wait.
The word, by the way, that instigated the breakdown? “Business.” As in, what business have you being a teacher of young children, Lady?
I heard later she’d slammed a boy’s head down on the desk for being late to class. Again… let’s contemplate the absurdity and evil of this activity not to mention her ill-conceived reasoning to punish a 7-year-old for being late to class. (“Sorry, Ma’am, I couldn’t get the car started.”) How she got away with this I’ll never know. But to this day these experiences formed my spirit in a positive way when it came later on to love and teach children. It fed my passion to be good to them in my adult life.
God was watching. God was planning. God was seeing.
God also had a sense of humor. You know that whole “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord” in the Old Testament? Next week I’ll reveal how God took over and repaid Mrs. M. on my behalf in a most unexpected and unplanned way… and all I had to do was just go on being myself.
I cannot help but smile like the cat who ate the canary at the very thought….
Hey, I have an idea! Do you read my stories a lot? Are you enjoying them? What if you sent one along to a friend who might get something out of it? Help me water this little seed of mine. Thank you!
Can’t wait for the next part of the story.