Childhood Stories: Rachel

A while back, I decided that I wanted to share some stories from my childhood.  If you miss that first post, you can find it here:      Childhood Stories: A Blunt Knife

Now, on with this post.

Rachel

When I was young, my mom did this thing that was fairly common at the time among lower to middle income families with a lot of children:  She babysat other children to earn extra money for our family.  At the time, these children who needed watching during the daytime work hours consisted mainly of children from single parent or divorced families in which the custodial parent had no choice but to work outside the home.

This is how I met Rachel.  

Rachel was the only daughter of a young nurse named Karen who my mother worked with at Children's Mercy Hospital. 

I've been trying to put together just how long my mom babysat Rachel based only on 40-year-old memories and the few factual dates that I can find.  I know that Rachel was born in October of 1971 and so was almost exactly two years younger than I.  In addition, I seem to remember her being at our home prior to me starting kindergarten at the age of 4.  My mom didn't stop watching Rachel until I was approximately 9 years old and in the 4th grade.  Putting this all together, it seems to be a span of around 5 years that Rachel and I's lives intersected.

During these years together, Rachel and I were constant playmates and became fast friends.  We spent hours upon hours playing together.  Just the two of us, sharing imagination and dreaming.  We were kindred spirits, cut from the same cloth:  Both creative, sensitive and shy yet optimistic and in awe of life.

I have many fond memories of Rachel.  We used to lay on our backs on the next door neighbor's front terrace and stare up at the clouds in wonder, occasionally pointing out the likeness of one to an elephant, giraffe or whatever other exotic animal we saw manifested.  We used to pretend to drive a huge city bus using an old discarded bicycle wheel as a steering wheel.  We used to pick and eat delicious mulberries off of the tree in our backyard.  We did that thing that kids do where we shared stories with each other of encounters with witches, ghosts, tornadoes, etc all the while knowing that the reality of each tale existed only in our imaginations and never calling the other person out for such obvious yarns.

I also remember a day when we adventured into the old detached garage behind our house.  A place we were specifically forbidden to explore due to the abundance of perilous rummage amassed there.   Of course, it was my idea and Rachel was reluctant to break the rules but I coaxed her into entering with the promise of a wondrous treasure of odds and ends.  And so, in we went.  I don't remember if our explorations were the cause or if there was another, but there were some pieces of broken glass scattered on the floor.  For some reason, broken glass is a wonder to children.  Perhaps because it is a surrealistic manifestation of things as they should not be.  A glimpse outside the sanitized childhood created by adults and into the truth of entropial reality.  At any rate, due to the aforementioned wonder, and to achieve the fullest experience thereof, I picked up a piece of the glass and ran my fingers along the smooth portion just letting the tip of my fingers skirt the jagged edge.  With the power of the glass to pierce delicate skin mere micrometers away, my fascination reached its zenith and I encouraged Rachel to pick up a piece so that she could also experience this fascination.  Rachel, perhaps being younger, clumsier or maybe merely not having as much exposure to broken glass as I, instantly ran her finger along the harsh broken edge and blood immediately began to flow.  I tried to comfort her.  Tried to tell her that it was just a small cut.  Tried to convince her that we didn't need to involve the adults.   But only for a moment because I saw that she was bleeding profusely and it would take more than the a mere bandaid to stanch the flow.
Rachel ended up going to the emergency room and receiving stitches that evening while I remained at home, crying in my sister's arms, overwhelmed with remorse due to the role I had played in sending her there.


The intersection of Rachel and I's worlds came to an end sometime in early 1979.  The details are a bit fuzzy.  As I mentioned above, the memories are nearly 40 years old and were processed and stored through the senses of a 9-year-old child.  That said, the following are the events as I remember them.

Rachel's mother dropped her off at our home one cold morning in January of 1979, drove herself to the hospital that she and my mother worked at and shot herself in the head, dying instantly.  I don't think that I ever saw Rachel again after that day.  At least I don't remember seeing her again.  I do know that after that day, she went to live with her father and stepmother in Warrensburg, MO which is about an hour away from the Kansas City, MO area.

It's interesting what childhood events do to you.  Try as I might, I cannot pull a clear image of Rachel's face into my mind.  I can pull vague images, kind of like if you were looking at someone out of the corner of your eye who is standing just behind you.  I can remember mannerisms.  I can remember characteristics.  I can sometimes remember her voice.  But I cannot lock into a clear memory of her face and I wish that I could.  The interesting part is that I have a clear memory of her mother's face.  A clear memory of her whole person actually.  Standing in our doorway in a while nurse's uniform with a slight smile on her face.  Saying goodbye to her daughter for the day.  This is odd because the interactions I had with her mother were few and were brief.  I can only surmise that due to the tragic way that she left this world, my 9-year-old brain chose to forever imprint a picture of her onto my grey matter.

Over the years, I would sometimes think or Rachel and so through the resourcefulness of the information super highway, I sought to reconnect with her using only her first and last name (which I wasn't even sure of the correct spelling of at the time).

Unfortunately, it didn't take me long to find out that I was too late.

Rachel Joan Rothove Rodriguez  passed away suddenly on Friday, December 2, 2005.  She was only 34 years old.
I was able to track down her stepmother and correspond briefly with her by email and take solace from a blog post she made a couple of weeks after Rachel's death.

Here is an excerpt:

"For now I am wondering, "How do I live the rest of my life without my daughter?" She died suddenly Dec. 2, 2005. We were very close despite the 1000 miles that could have kept us apart. We talked daily, often more than once. I have always been grateful for our relationship, and it has been wonderful for some years now. But now I dread answering the phone. Kind of like becoming sensitive to the traffic behind you after a rear-end accident.

The last two weeks have shown me how she had accomplished...all her high school dreams and more. A loving husband, beautiful children(3), a big home, and a successful career as an entrepeneur. Regardless of her young age of 35 Rachel had lived several lifetimes. She had become my best friend, sometimes my only friend. We have talked each other through so many life experiences. We had great laughs and great arguments. I am lost without her.

Her last interest was in the work and life of Frida Kahlo, a painter. My daughter related to the hardship. It is a long story. The end has arrived. I will see my work differently. I have to relocate the joy, maybe filter Rachel's sense of humor and tastes in a body of work."

 This post along with the description of Rachel in her obituary are a perfect reflection of the Rachel I knew and I am happy for that.  Her obit speaks of her enjoying singing, dancing, reading and writing poetry and collective thoughts.  She was a truly creative soul.

And so, I can't help but wonder.  Why?  Are some people just cursed?  It seems that from the moment of her birth, Rachel's life was meant for ultimate demise.  Does life just home in on certain people and destin them for tragedy and hardship?  We all know of people who seem to be followed by trials.  Modern day Jobs if you will.  There have been two such people in my life thus far.  One is Rachel and the other is my sister Mary.  I won't speak of Mary in this post but her story is equally as tragic as Rachel's if not more so.  Why do some people appear to be earmarked for disaster?

I guess none of us can really know.

For me, I will keep wondering and questioning while I cherish the impact that Rachel had in my life during my own troubled childhood years.  She helped me survive in her own way and I will be forever grateful and inspired by her life to seek to do the same for others.

                                        

Childhood Stories: A Blunt Knife

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.