The Damnable Lie of Being Unseen
It All Started With a Star on The Door.
I am a praying woman. I don’t just mean “Now I lay me down to sleep,” but I pray the old Catholic prayers handed down generations. I pray as I walk my dog and drive my car. And when it is necessary, and recently it seems to have become more and more necessary, I have gone positively Pentecostal (sans snakes.)
When I storm heaven I take no prisoners. And if you need prayer? I will unleash my inner Holy Kraken on your behalf.
I’m telling this because I have the strange feeling that my writing is about to take wing. What that means for me is more honesty – much more. What that means for you is - up to you.
I sincerely hope I don’t disappoint building up something that falls like an egg on a lonely sidewalk sometime in late September in El Paso, Texas. (That’s really hot by the way.) So journey with me. I wonder what will happen….
I told you the story about my miracle year and the healing of my mass of fibroids and so you already know that God not only was there, got me through wholly as He does, but also converted me and got me hitched miraculously to my first love who I’d not seen for roughly seventeen years… all with great love. So. Yep. I’m a Believer.
Now I want to start you on another story - about a little girl and a star.
And her mother.
It has to be this way. There’s no story without her. (Spoiler: It’s about me and I’m talking about my Grandmother – you, my faithful reader, know the drill but if you are new here, click away).
Also, her mother. Yes, I am repeating myself. (Her mother. The one that went into labor on my behalf so I could live.) I have so much crazy BIG LOVE for these women it would take eternity to convey it but for today… the story about the star.
It’s mostly about the former mother (Grandmother) who is now in heaven. It think. I’m Catholic and I believe in Purgatory. I believe it’s a good place. Just not THE good place. And that it’s temporary. Like spending some time in rehab (and who doesn’t need rehab after living in this world?) before the gates open to that Fine Place that hardly anyone can explain well: Heaven. I know she’s not in Hell. Yep. I believe in that place too. Call me Medieval. (They knew more than you were taught.)
I don’t know who suggested it. Probably me by way of my perky joy filled and bright personality from the “get”. I’m not being obnoxious here. I’m not lacking humility when I say that. We all are born with innocence and sweet gifts. And if you go back far enough, you’ll remember something original. Something that someone either invested in or squashed. But you had - and still have - that special something.
Well, Mom (Grandmother – I will say “Mom” from now on) invested – big time – in my special something.
That investment, in recognition of my desire to perform, a natural coordination, and a little one who was not shy (if naturally a little meek) appeared in the form of acting lessons, dancing lessons and later, voice lessons – with some visual art to boot.
We hear about these stories a lot. The kid who just had that ability to perform. I’m going to tell you the story of how that investment was watered…
And how it sent me to the depths of hell.
Whoa Fleur! Have some gratitude why don’t you! Where’s the laughs? Oh, keep going, Friend.
A little reminder here – I don’t write about “it” until I’ve dealt with it. Of course there’s always realizations as one writes. But my hope is that this story will in some way (only God knows how) free you.
My first acting class was the “funnest” thing at the age of seven I’d experienced. More fun that the red leotard and tutu with pink tights and slippers. More fun that the black patten leather taps with the sweet grosgrain bow at the top of my instep. And way more fun than doing an arabesque on the top of my banana seat Schwinn going down the street at approximately fifteen miles an hour. (Sorry, don’t have a picture of that so you’ll just have to trust me that I did, in fact, stand upright on my bike and arabesque flying down the road.)
Acting was the grand prize winner. I’d found a place to PLAY and be utterly free. A place to get it alllll out. And I had a lot to get out. More than I knew. By seven I was only two years from finding out that my Mother was really my grandmother. But my spirit knew something was off every day of my young life up to then. (What child cries as if Armageddon is happening every single time her “big sister” goes back home after a weekend visit? The child who spirit knows it is actually her own mother who is departing. Not her sister.)
Acting class was a place to express myself with great encouragement and support. All it took was pretending to be in a circus or to connect myself to a human “machine”, becoming a part of the whole, a place to tell stories.
On this particular summer day (actually now that I think on it, it must have been winter, but …you know… Texas), I ran outside to the non-color beige ’76 Chevy sedan (it was probably older than that) where my Stepfather and mother sat waiting for me after acting class.
“They are having auditions! Can I audition? I want to audition! Please?! It’s for Rudolph! It’s happening now!”
I didn’t really know what an audition was, but I was determined to do it.
Mom always relayed to me later that if it wasn’t for my Stepfather, it never would have happened. I call bull on that. She just always wanted me to like him.
Never-the-less I got to stay and be included in a large rehearsal room with about a hundred other kids my age, give or take a few years, who also wanted to be an elf or a reindeer or a toy that comes to life magically in Santa’s workshop.
All the parents watched. The director would call our names after we’d been given a paper with some lines to read. I stood in the corner of the room focusing my eyes and ears with laser awareness on the other boys and girls as they gave it their best shot.
Don’t do it like anyone else. Don’t do it like anyone else. The thought replayed in my seven-year-old head. No one taught me that. I just knew. I had to be different to get the part. I now think that was my guardian angel coaching me.
But that’s what I did. I got a few chances. Then it was over, and we left.
I don’t remember waiting for the answer. I don’t remember worrying about the casting. I don’t remember the time in between the audition and the next part of this story. Probably because I hadn’t learn to care or perhaps because I have bad memory. Do you do that? You have blocks and flashes of childhood memory but the day-to-day fades? Or is it just me? I have large swaths of memory blacked out. Some have told me that happens to children of trauma (or drama). I wonder if that’s God’s mercy. He just takes it away because it isn’t who you are anymore and to remember would only stir the pot. And unless it is for your ultimate good, He lets the pot be still. He has brought you through to this day. When he wants you to remember for the sake of goodness, He will drop the necessary memory back in. He will stir the pot.
I came home from school. This would have been first grade. My mother. My mother was beautiful. I once, quite honestly and innocently told her this when I was very young. Because it was true. I remember how she quietly thanked me. Now that I am an adult and have worked with so many women in areas of support (Moms or not), I can understand how lovely that must have been for her. So many mothers feel unseen.
Which brings me back to the star and the girl.
After school this day, Mom had this wonderfully secretive and excited smile on her face - the smile you get on your face when you know you have something lovely for your child. Something you know that will make them happy and you had something to do with it. You get to be the one to give them the good news.
She led me through our hallway back to my bedroom door which was closed. She beckoned me to look up. And on the door, she had hung a simple, perfectly measured, yellow construction papered star.
I knew immediately what that meant.
I got the part. And Mom had put a star on my door. I look back now and think how she got that call on the rotary kitchen phone with the long twisted curly cord, accepted for me, wrote down the details, and then I think how much time she had before I would be out of school. And instead of just telling me outright – she made it fun. She found yellow construction paper. She drew those straight lines with a ruler. She cut perfectly. She found a little tac. And she hung the star on my door. How sweet. How innocent.
How we plant seeds without understanding what we’re doing.
Ohhhh, Symbols, symbols, symbols.
She told me I would be an elf – but not just any elf – the lead elf. I wouldn’t be merely a number like “Elf #4”. I had a name: “Twinkle”. Yes, Friend, you are now reading the writings of the former Twinkle, The Elf. I know. I know. I buried the lead. You never knew how blessed you were.
But oh, the joy! The moment was filled with the thrill of delight! Almost as good as my birthday. This was glee!
If only…if only what came after could have been filled with an identity that I would only begin to understand forty years later.
Mom put a star on my door.
She told me to look up. Oh, that she would have lifted my head up further to the Guiding Star. But God was there. He was in that hallway. Smiling. Filled with laughter and enjoyment at his girl and the construction paper star, a pale imposter to his North Star. He wasn’t worried. He knew it was all temporary. I’d like to think he enjoyed seeing me in a green pointy hat and pants, plaid Christmas shirt, black Mary-Janes, and a long white beard.
He also knew my mother was doing her best to give me a Big Dream. He knew it was disordered. He was with her too. Maybe a little less of a smile. His love for her no less even though she’d walked away from Him and the church. Oh how he loved her.
Yes, he was there.
Will you go on this journey with me? I want to tell you how this beautiful, intelligent, sharply-witted woman, who loved me infinitely, possessively, “you’ll never know how much…” she’d say, who wanted the very best for me, who would do anything to see me succeed in life, led me to a world where I would be crushed.
Crushed by what? The world? Everyone carries that weight.
No.
By the weight of living her idea of what it means to succeed. By getting lost in the maze of who I was called to be and who she thought she should have been…
…because of the damnable lie of being unseen.
“Well, Sir, I’m sure you can tell, Sir… that, well Sir, I’m sure you could see that… only Winkle could give you an accurate account of the situation, Sir!”
Oh how beautiful she was!
You asked if it was just you with memory gaps...oh no I have so many I used to think as I child I must have just dropped from the sky one day! Oh how the child thinks is so innocent! I wish sometimes the innocent thoughts didn’t fade away!
What a fun and deep story that leaves me wondering. And you are right, your mother is beautiful, and still being seen.