It occurred to me recently that many of us spend the first 15 to 20 years of our lives receiving emotional and mental scars and the remaining 50 to 60 years trying to heal. This post is a recounting of the first scar that I can remember receiving. Based on the substance of my childhood, there were likely other similarly scaring events that preceded this, shaping me, even without my cognizance or permission. If so, they still remain buried, far beneath the reaches of my current memory.
I was 4 years old when I received this scar and it was given to me by my mother. Although the first of its kind, it would not be the last.
Even now as I contemplate the simplicity and relative minuteness of this incident, I sometimes question if I'm really justified in saying that it hurt me. Such is the way of abuse in any form. It often leaves a person dangling somewhere between victim and victor.
It was a winter day, cold and overcast. All of my siblings who lived at home at the time were at school and I was at home alone with my mother. I remember that I was playing in the living room when I heard my mother in the dining room becoming agitated and mumbling to herself. The mumblings soon turned to angry rantings which grew steadily until I was summoned to the dining room.
By this age, I had experienced this side of my mother's temperament numerous times and so I was quite apprehensive. Nevertheless, I hesitantly obeyed and made my way into the dining room, only to find my mother standing over a piece of chewing gum that had been smashed onto the wood floor. My mother continued with her tirade and now I could hear the specifics of her ranting: How horrible, ungrateful and useless we all were. How she was the only one who ever did anything around the house. As I stood paralyzed and speechless, she continued on for a a few minutes (which felt like an eternity) and then abruptly instructed me to go into the kitchen to get a blunt knife from the drawer. I hesitated and looked at her uncertainly: I had no idea what a blunt knife was. This blunt knife that she spoke of sounded unique and special and the only knife I could think of that might meet this criteria was the little wooden handled knife with the bent tip that I had seen my mother use to remove grapefruit from the half peel. As my mind raced, trying to work out exactly which knife my mother intended for me to retrieve, my hesitation served only to agitate my mother further. Misinterpreting my hesitancy as procrastination (perhaps even defiance), she impatiently and angrily scolded me to get moving and get the knife.
I moved cautiously but deliberately into the kitchen and opened the silverware drawer, scouring my little mind for any inkling of what the word blunt might mean and coming up entirely blank. I examined each of the knives and finally settled on the one serrated edge steak knife that just happened to be mixed in with the rest of the table knives. I can't remember if I grabbed this knife randomly out of haste, in an attempt not to invoke even more of my mother's wrath for dawdling, or if I thought that perhaps this was the special type of knife that my mother wanted. Maybe at that moment, I reasoned that this must be what she meant by "blunt." After all, this knife was different than all of the other knives in the drawer and surely this instrument with a sharp tip would work much better to scrape the gum off of the floor.
Whatever the reason, I headed back to the dining room and handed the knife to my mother.
I am still perplexed to this day, why my mother snatched the knife from my hand and began to scrape at the gum, consequently putting scratches all over the surface of the already worn wood floor. Perhaps her aggravation and anger had temporarily overridden all external input. Whateverthe case may be, after a few moments of scraping, she suddenly exploded at me and began to berate me for bringing her a steak knife when she clearly asked for a blunt knife. I cannot remember if I voiced that I didn't know what a blunt knife was or if my mother just figured it out but she continued to castigate me by letting me know how stupid I was for not knowing.
"I ASKED YOU FOR A BLUNT KNIFE! You mean that you don't even know what a blunt knife is? You don't even know that? At your age?" She went to the silverware drawer, yanked it open, grabbed a table knife, shoved it in front of my face and said, "THIS IS WHAT A BLUNT KNIFE LOOKS LIKE! THIS!"
For a few minutes, she continued to rail against the general inadequacy of my intelligence level until there was a lengthy enough pause for me to feel like it was time for me to slowly slink away.
I learned at least two of things that day.
First, I learned what a blunt knife looked like; Although, I still wasn't sure exactly what the word blunt meant.
Second, and more significantly, I learned that I was stupid.
That I didn't know things that I should know at my age. Things that a "normal" kid would know.
That I was lacking.
That I was less than.
That I had little to offer.
And just like that, in the space of 20 minutes, a seed was planted. It was a tiny seed, but one that would set its roots deep, sprout and then flourish.
The Bible speaks of the kingdom of God being like a tiny mustard seed which, when sown upon the soil, grows large and treelike so that even birds can come and rest in its branches.
Ironically, inferiority is also like a tiny seed, only when it is sown upon the soil of a little one's psyche, it grows into a twisted, ugly, crippled tree which provides no shelter but instead, an overwhelming sense of darkness and hopelessness.
And so began my crippled tree. It would be cultivated and nourished by many different factors throughout my childhood, but as far as I can remember, it was planted on that cold winter day.
Sometimes, I look back on that day and all of the days that followed and I think about the affect it all has had on the way I interact with my children. I have many times heard the voice of my mother as I'm scolding and regretted my words the moment they've passed my lips. I'm a lot like my mother and on many levels, I understand her frustration and her volatile temper. However, I've tried to communicate to my children that I'm not perfect and I've always made a point of apologizing when I've lost it. This is something that my mother never did when I was growing up. She never said sorry for any of her actions. Her pride would not allow the possibility of admitting wrong because being right was far more important to her than anything or anyone. To be fair, my mother had her own childhood issues which affected the way that she treated my siblings and I. Still, at some point the chain must be broken and we each have a responsibility to take part in making that happen.
I suppose one positive that came out of the way that my mother treated me when I was a child is the ever present recognition that I am not always right as a parent. I'm human and I make mistakes and when I make them with my children, I openly and directly acknowledge it with a sincere apology. I'm certainly not perfect at this process, but I try and that's more than my mother ever did.
I just hope that the scars I've produced in my children are few and that my affirmation of their value is enough to heal whatever damage I've caused.
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