Searching

So there was nothing earth-shattering revealed during my hypnosis session, however there were at least a few things that were pretty interesting. It wasn't so much the specifics of any particular memories I ended up going towards - all of which were previously known, conscious memories - but the tone, the feeling behind them. The overwhelming sense was that of being unprotected.

The inhabited space of home and backyard felt big, and unpredictable. Too many boys. There were too many boys around. I felt small. I spent a lot of time simply watching the world of adults and older siblings spin around me. My mother is a kind and good woman, but her arms were not my automatic refuge. Neither were my father's, but the memories I have of feeling refuge with him are clearer, and more specific.

Sitting with him at church, his arm around me so I could rest my head there. Warmth and security, smelling of Bay Rum after-shave and Tiger Balm. Naps on the living room floor, his arm my pillow. As a very young girl, in my favorite pajamas, sitting on his knee in the summertime darkness, he still smoked cigars then. Neighbors that I don't remember were there, but it was me in my favorite pajamas, savoring the summertime night air, cigar smells and beer smells and distant thunder, and the attention of my father.

I realize now that I responded more to my father as a nurturing presence because his affection was expressed in concrete, tangible ways, ways that I could feel and touch. I needed this. My mother, an anorexic in college, remained uncomfortable in her body, even after birthing nine children and losing one. The physical was not her realm, though I believe she made her connection to it through childbirth, through the uncontrollable surging of her belly and all of the pain that came at the end. God's Will.

It's quite obvious why my parents worked, and continue to work still, 52 years into it. They balance each other. My father with his deep, physical connection to food, a star athlete as a youth, a Marine who was also a baker while in service; later while raising a family, dabbling in Tai Chi and woodcarving and birdkeeping among so many other hobbies. He possesses a temper that is utterly frightening - to a child, petrifying - in large part because of its rarity. His voice booming, penetrating, "I'm going to take off my strap!" But rarely following through with the threat.

My mother, rising before dawn to pray for at least half an hour before making the trek up the hill to open the church, acting as a quasi-nun now that the convent is out of commission. She unlocks the back door and turns on the lights switch by switch, before welcoming the tiny handful of churchgoers who arrive daily by 6:00 a.m. My mother's true desire is to do God's Will, with consciousness. She is adored by the patients at the convalescent home where she brings Holy Communion, and has been referred to by neighbors, in all earnestness, as an angel.

Earth and Heaven. Body and Spirit. Physical and Mental.

Their influence has made me who I am. Easily the most hedonistic of their entire brood, influenced and enthralled by the sensual and even the sullied and yet... well, I remember once my mother issuing one of her bi-annual pleas to me, that she hopes one day I return to the church, along with my younger brother. She admitted then that she felt he and I were both "very spiritual", to which I responded something to the effect that "You know we're both good people. And that's all that matters." She had to assent.

And so... where am I going with all of this? A place I never expected to go. I feel like I'm finally, slowly, beginning to understand what I need and why. That attempts were made to meet my needs but the attempts were made by humans, not gods. That my frailty, and their frailty are not necessarily faults, but crooked paths to salvation, to true humanity, and true humility.

Are we really in the end motherless children? I know I must find my own safety, wrap my own arms about myself, find my own beauty and innocence. My own freedom and joy.

I want to pass the past on the left right or center, and yield to the present, allow my heart to be touched, entered, inhabited, but still remain undiminished and whole. I can envision it. And that makes it possible.