We all have experiences in the past that cause us shame, especially when we get older. It’s inevitable. I could provide a laundry list of my personal regrets and hurts. Chances not taken. Cruelties inflicted. Things not said. It’s not healthy to obsess over these moments, but I do, late at night, when I can’t fall asleep.
Marie Howe writes about a childhood trauma . . .
Sixth Grade
by: Marie Howe
The afternoon the neighborhood boys tied me and Mary Lou Maher
to Donny Ralph’s father’s garage doors, spread-eagled,
it was the summer they chased us almost every day.
Careening across the lawns they’’d mowed for money,
on bikes they threw down, they’d catch us, lie on top of us,
then get up and walk away.
That afternoon Donny’s mom wasn’t home.
His nine sisters and brothers gone—even Gramps, who lived with them,
gone somewhere—the backyard empty, the big house quiet.
A gang of boys. They pulled the heavy garage doors down,
and tied us to them with clothesline,
and Donny got the deer’s leg severed from the buck his dad had killed
the year before, dried up and still fur-covered, and sort of
poked it at us, dancing around the blacktop in his sneakers, laughing.
Then somebody took it from Donny and did it.
And then somebody else, and somebody after him.
Then Donny pulled up Mary Lou’s dress and held it up,
and she began to cry, and I became a boy again, and shouted Stop.,
and they wouldn’t.
Then a girl-boy, calling out to Charlie my best friend’s brother,
who wouldn’t look
Charlie! to my brother’s friend who knew me
Stop them. And he wouldn’t.
And then more softly, and looking directly at him, I said, Charlie.
And he said Stop. And they said What? And he said Stop it.
And they did, quickly untying the ropes, weirdly quiet,
Mary Lou weeping. And Charlie? Already gone.
Certain experiences stay with you like scars throughout your life. Some are collective traumas—the JFK assassination, Challenger explosion, 9-11 attacks. Others are more personal—physical abuse, schoolyard bullying, high school heartbreak. What Howe describes here is a childhood trauma that haunts her into adulthood.
As I said above, I have tons of regrets and hurts. I never told my dad I loved him. Ever. My mother spent the final two or three years of her life in a nursing home, and I can count on one hand the number of times I visited her. I was a chubby kid who played piano, wrote poems, and went to see the original Star Wars 27 times in the theater. I pretty much had a target on my back all through middle school. Faithful disciples of this blog know all about the struggles that addictions have inflicted on my marriage and family. (I still go to therapy over these.)
I believe that most poetry comes from places of pain. Old wounds that haven’t healed. There’s something exquisitely beautiful about sorrow and grief. Because you can’t experience either of those emotional states without also experiencing great joy and love. Only the people we love and trust the most can inflict trauma in our lives. I can vouch for that statement. (Sorry, but I am not going to drag those skeletons out of my closet for this post. Suffice to say, I have childhood traumas that shaped me into the person I am today.)
If I could go back in time to change my past and avoid those childhood traumas, would I? I don’t think so. Those wounds run deep, and I think they’ve made me a kinder, gentler individual than I would have been otherwise. More empathetic and understanding. Plus, I get a hell of a lot of poems out of that material.
I don’t think pain is intrinsically negative or positive. It’s what we do with that pain that matters. My childhood pain made me a better father, I think. The marital struggles I endured taught me a great deal about trust and love and respect. Made me a better partner. You get the idea. Trauma can destroy or shape you.
Saint Marty wrote a poem about generational trauma for this evening . . .
Imaginary Family Tree
by: Martin Achatz
My dad jogged behind that limo in Dallas,
kept a white shirt rusted with Kennedy’s blood
in the bedroom closet until the day he died.
My mother marched on Washington in 1963,
stood under Lincoln’s marble gaze
while Martin climbed that mountaintop
and dreamed in front of her.
My great grandma sewed suffragette sashes
for Susan B. Anthony, slept next to her
at night, voting yes! and yes! again
with lips and fingers in the dark.
My great great great grandpa stood by Grant
in the courthouse, watched a war end
so quietly he could hear flies buzzing
on Lee’s Confederate gray gelding outside.
Me? I’ll bequeath my Nobel Prize diploma
to my kids. It’s hanging above my desk
at the moment, looking a lot like a Valentine
my daughter made me in kindergarten,
a flock of crayon hearts slapping my eyes.
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