Our calendars and birthdays say we live time as a line, always moving forward.
But that’s not true at all.
Like trees, we carry with us all that ever was –
Every lesson that we’ve learned,
Every thought, from childhood on,
Every failure, loss, and triumph –
These, our rings, surround us always.
How mother treated us when we were two
And what we thought
Became the basis for a lifetime during which
We’ve lived anew the same reaction
With all our loved ones.
When we've lost a precious friend or prized position,
We relived, in depth, all earlier losses.
We harbor the illusions that each new person is the one before,
And that we haven’t changed since we were three.
We are cumulative.
As we were, we are,
Though growing over time in strength and depth, in knowing and in love.
Reflection
When Ellen and I first got together in 1999, we were older – retirement-aged. We thought of ourselves as “grown up,” “being able to take care of ourselves.” We’d long since left behind childish beliefs like Santa Claus. However, though we were serious women who had, to our detriment, long since forgotten how to play, pretend, and be totally aware of the present moment like children, we soon stumbled over our inner three-year-olds.
Ellen was acutely ashamed of her paralyzed arm and hand. She remembered feeling desperately mortified as a one-year old, because, with one arm, she hadn't been able to crawl or raise herself to a standing position. She knew her family were worried that she would be retarded, abnormal. When she did finally take her first steps, at around 20 months, she remembered vividly the embarrassment she had felt about their concerns when her aunt, who had been watching her while her mother was at work, announced with relief, on her mother Pauline’s return, “The baby walked.”
This may seem unusual at that age, but Ellen remembered graphically and understood everything that happened to her from the moment of her traumatic birth.
The earliest photo that Ellen had of herself was a studio portrait taken when she was about 2. Her right shoulder and arm were crudely blocked out by the photographer, who placed a paper or cardboard in front of that part of the negative when printing the picture. She kept the picture, but remembered feeling ashamed looking at it, even as a tiny child. The black space at the bottom of the photo, where her arm should have been visible, was a concrete expression of her family’s embarrassment about the way she was. I look at that photo now, and see a baby whose eyes show the depth and sorrow of an old person, hidden by a smile that presented a brave front.
Ellen Age 2 1934
I too had felt ashamed from a very young age. I just never managed to fit the profile of the quiet, compliant, healthy, neat, girlish child who loved dolls and playing house – the “perfect daughter” that my mother wished for, who would long for frilly dresses and little satin- trimmed, heart-shaped aprons. I remember realizing, at age 3, that my mother wasn't ever going to be pleased with me.
I had terrible eczema and constant diarrhea. My skin was always rough, raw, cracked, bleeding, weeping, intensely itchy. It had been that way when I was born. The recommended treatment for eczema at that time was to smear the erupted areas with stinky tar salve that indelibly stained black everything with which it came in contact. Following doctor’s orders, they stripped me twice a day, none too gently, and smeared 50% or more of my body and limbs – all the places broken out in eczema -- with that horrible, stinging salve. Understandably, they found the task repulsive, and I felt like a leper, loathsome and vile. (That salve also didn’t help the rash or the itching particularly.) At night I was tied to the bed like an animal to try to prevent me from scratching. In addition, I was always distracted, living in my own world, inevitably forgetful -- the stereotypical girl with ADD. My mother found me a constant source of frustration and embarrassment. I’m sure she also, like Ellen’s mother, worried lovingly about how I would turn out, but I didn’t see that part.
Rosemary Age 1 1940
As Ellen's and my relationship developed, we both became re-acquainted with how we had felt as small children. Periodically, one or the other of us would say something innocent that would plunge the other into desperate feelings of abandonment, unworthiness, and vicious resentment. As each of us experienced her private Hell, we could no longer communicate with the other. Side by side, we’d sit in silence, in resentful emotional pain, not comprehending what had happened – feeling abandoned.
It took months of experiencing this despair over and over, and of talking with our respective therapists, then sharing with each other what we’d said to the therapists and what each therapist had said in response, before it slowly dawned on us what was happening.
Whatever slight remark had triggered our standoffs had reminded one of us of interactions with her mother during early childhood. As small children, we had both felt persecuted and misunderstood by our mothers. We had learned to expect that interacting with Mother would leave us feeling inadequate, defective, and unwelcome. It was as if a chute had opened beneath us and, powerless and uncomprending, we had suddenly found ourselves back in the suffering of early childhood.
When we went back to that child-self, we always found, in climbing back out, that whatever had caused our indignation resulted not from any hurtful intention of the other, but rather from our misinterpretation of the other’s efforts to be kind and sympathetic, or our misunderstanding of the origins and context of the other’s words or acts. We were from different cultures, and also, I suppose neither of us was used to someone else consistently treating us with consideration. We expected the worst and had hair-trigger reactions. Both of us trying so hard simultaneously led to many misunderstandings that would have been comic if they had not been so distressing.
Ellen always said that we are, simultaneously, “all the ages we’ve ever been. ” Our joys, our fears, and our sources of anger remain with us all our lives, and reappear, to be felt again, each time those emotions are summoned forth.
She also said that each time we experience grief, we grieve again all the losses we’ve ever experienced. I see now, after this past year of grieving, how very insightful this observation was, as well.
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