Gremlins September 21, 2010

When I was a kid there were two things specifically that I wasn’t supposed to watch: Rock the Cradle of Love music video by dearest, Billy Idol and Gremlins. I watched them both.

I can still remember being behind the couch in the dark when brother Billy Idol’s video was on. I knew I wasn’t supposed to watch it but I was all alone and I had to. All I really remember is a girl doing some sort leg kick with black lace stockings. It was scandalous.

Unfortunately, I watched Gremlins twice. I don’t know why because it scared the absolute crap out of me. I’m still sort of like that today with scary stuff. When I nannied in Louisville, this show called Haunted would come on during the baby’s nap. It terrified me to the point that I could barely walk up to get the baby during the day time. But for weeks I watched it. It was like a masochistic form of entertainment. I’m such a blazing weirdo.

When it comes to watching Gremlins, I remember being really scared to go to bed and particularly, letting my feet hang over the edge of the bed. Three things I remember about that movie: There was a nice innocent fuzzy guy named Gizmo with big ears with really mean friends that multiplied if they got wet and popped up all over the place like popcorn when the water hit them.

Number 2: Gremlins under the bed.

Number 3: Gremlins saying milk duds in a scary gremlin-ish voice.

And number three again since I said I only remembered three things but really remembered four:

Something about a blender in a kitchen scene with Gremlins.

Now this movie made for some scary nights as a kid. My room was downstairs in the basement with no windows. I actually loved it because it was so dark and cool but if you were scared, it was a booty to be in.

This one particular night I was totally wigged out of my mind. I did what we’ve all done at some point…called for your parents to come to your rescue. Then, like always, you say…I think there is something in the closet etc. And also, like always, your dad goes to the closet and you are holding your breath thinking to yourself, “It was nice knowing you dad. Meet mister Gremlin masterrrrrrr!!!!”

Your parents always seem to survive but you fear for their safety every time.

After the closet had been given clearance from the dad, he thought he would have a teachable moment with me. He probably thought my legs were tired from running and jumping in the bed every night for fear of my feet being down by the dust ruffle so he thought he would help me overcome it.

He said, “Look, I’ll put my feet down and show you it’s okay and then you do it.”

Hesitantly, I lowered my innocent, bony ankles down to the brave carpet that lived around the bottom of my bed.

“See, Rebecca! It’s okay.”

Then I felt two hands slip around my ankles and they started pulling me under the bed saying, “Milk Duds, Milk Dudddssssss!!!!!!”

“So long, dad! Thanks for the lesson! Tell the pets I love them and whatever you do, don’t get this guy wet!”

Terror.

My dad had no clue that my brother had been lovingly hiding under the bed and my brother had no clue that my dad would seek a teachable moment and lead me right into the bait.

This is why it’s dangerous having brother’s. If Eden has sister’s I think their equivalent of getting back at each other would be like cutting a braid off of their Barbie Doll’s head. Brothers play for keeps.

It’s funny now but I’m promise you I saw kindergarten flash before my eyes.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve carried my freakish, skiddish, scary bone into adulthood. Literally, the night before I had Eden, I would have been afraid to walk to her nursery at night by myself. I told Lance pre-baby not to be mad at me when I woke him up to walk me to go get her. Somehow, now that she’s here, I’m some sort of superhero Gremlin slayer. It’s weird. I’m sure Lance is thankful for this new-found courage. I guess monsters are for children and I’m a mommy now.

I’m sure in the years to come she will call me in there to look under her bed. Unfortunately, after she tells me someone is under there I’ll probably get scared and have to call in Lance. Hearing her detail the man under her bed will be like watching the haunted. I hope she doesn’t scream because I might too.

I actually just jumped when my cell phone rang, picturing having to look under the dark world of the lower bed spaces.

What if there really was something under there? Even if it was the cat I think I would scream. Playing hide-and-go-seek is stressful for me because I’m freaked to pull something back and have a silent, crafty buddy just staring at me. That happens to people in horror films you know it’s just that the buddies have knives. Only slightly different.

If you are ever in the situation and a Gremlin is under your kid’s bed. I pray for your wisdom and safety. And no matter how many times they ask, don’t give them milk duds. Like they deserve it… If you keep giving them candy every time they pull your kid under the bed, you’ll be doing it for years. You don’t want to encourage bad behavior.  The first rule of Gremlin slaying:  Don’t feed the monsters.  Or the brothers.

Sticks and Stones July 22, 2010

I often wonder what my life would’ve been like if I hadn’t met her.  I think about that more than I should considering how much time has passed.  I can still put myself back on that playground in 6th grade.  I remember the last day of that school year, dropping to my knees on the dirt by the monkey bars and thanking the Lord that the year was finished.  It was early morning before school started with the dew still on the ground.  I walked to school everyday so no one was there yet.  It was just me, the empty playground, and the early morning sun.  I felt a burden lifting off of me as the last day started but the damage had already been done.  All these years later, the only redemption I see in meeting that person was that it gave me a compassion and love for children who are bullied and I love to counsel those hurting children.

6th grade was one of the hardest years of my life.  I don’t know that this person even knows that it was because of her or if she evens knows how hard it was for me.  And for what?  Why was this year so hard?  Jealousy.  

27 years ago I was born with a gift.  The gift of singing.  I learned very early on that people don’t want good things for others that they want for themselves and people will hate you for it.  Literally hate you.  And she did.  I really think the only thing I did to her was sing.  I went to her birthday party either the year of or the year before and she had a talent show.  I sang Janet Jackson “Again” for my talent alongside of one of my lifelong best friends who did backbends for her performance =0)  We still laugh about that.   The bad news was, I won that talent show at her birthday.  I’m not sure when she would say it started for her but the best I can tell, it happened then.  I’m not sure if she really remembers the details of things she said or how much she hated me.  For her it was expressing her anger.  For me it was picking up a tab of anxiety and creating insecurities in me that would last a lifetime.  My part of it stays with you much longer.  27 years longer.

Specifically, I remember her saying, “I’ll be on my world tour and I’ll see Rebecca flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s and I’ll say…’heres to your singing!’

I had people come up to me on the playground and say, “Sing Rebecca.” 

If I did I was conceited.  If I didn’t I was “too good” for them.  I couldn’t win.   This became an everyday battle for me and the weapons were the words that look silly in hindsight but words that were meant to wound me.  And they did.

One time a really sweet girl came up to me after being put up to it by that girl and she said, ”The only reason you can sing so good is because you try so hard.”

That would make me laugh now except for how bad it hurt me at the time.  I mean, what she said was ridiculous!  Basically, it was a backhanded compliment.  If you can even put those two words together.

McDonald’s, singing well because I tried ‘so hard’ (whatever that means), I’m sure seems like stupid elementary school banter but when you’re young and I guess when you are older too…no matter how ludicrous a comment, you are always hurt by the intent.  You spend your whole life being encouraged by your family and then all the sudden you enter the cruel world of cafeterias and yellow school buses filled with children unattended by their parents and it gets ugly.   All of the sudden, someone tells you you’re defective and it seems so blunt and shocking that it seems like the truth.  Somewhere along the way, you believe it.  You start to think, “My parents just say this and that because they love me but this person has no motivation to protect me so they must be being brutally honest.”  My mom told me then she was jealous but stuck somewhere in a life stage where you don’t have logical reasoning, I couldn’t believe it was that.  It was me.  It had to be.  A gift started to feel like a curse.  A curse that I believed wasn’t even a talent anymore because she told me so.

I picture her in my mind reading this and I think, “If she read this she would probably say this is dumb.  That was a million years ago and we were kids so get over it.”  Partly, that bothers me the most.  Everyone wants validation. Yes, it was a long time ago but time has nothing to do with how it effected you in that moment and those terrible moments build who you are an incident at a time.  Traumatic things take years to get over.  It would be like saying that my parents got divorced when I was ten and because I’m 27 now, it shouldn’t affect me.  Heartbreak from anything is life shaping.  Especially when it lasts a year.  Especially when you are a vulnerable, sensitive child.

I still sing today and it’s still my passion.  I deal with terrible nerves.  I deal with crippling nerves that can butcher any song =0)  It’s much better than it use to be but sometimes I’m about to sing and I feel like those little girls on the playground.  I feel like both of them.  The one that hurt and that one that taunted me.  I don’t hear her voice in my head but rather the echoes of what she made me believe about myself.  She’s kept me off the stage most of my life. 

There are times I’ve just gone for it in an attempt to get over it and it’s helped me heal.  I tried out for a musical in high school.  It was my first audition and first musical.  I got the lead.  My freshmen year in college I sang for a vocal coach in Nashville and within 8 weeks found myself in Atlanta singing for a producer and being offered a deal.  I backed out a week before I signed which is a long story but not one I regret.  I came back home to sing for Campus Crusades for Christ every week at our hometown university.  I sing almost every week at church now.  It’s not that I don’t forgive that girl.  It’s not that she’s kept me from nervously sticking my head out there to sing and be vulnerable to be judged all over again.  It’s just that the ease and pleasure has been sucked out of it and that’s what she meant to happen to me at the time.  I’ve been afraid to succeed.  Afraid to be admired because someone might be jealous.  More afraid to not be admired for it because I will feel like the little girl praying in the dirt who believed that she wasn’t good enough.  I feel afraid that if no one thought I was good, then she was right.  She took my confidence one hateful agonizing day at a time and I’ve been fighting to get it back ever since.

All of that was hard for me to say.  It’s hard for me to accept accomplishments and even harder to say them outloud.  I still feel like she’ll catch me by the swingsets and tell me I’m cocky.  It’s ridiculous.  There is no reason that we should be ashamed of our gifts.  It’s a slap in the face to the Creator who gave that gift to us for His glory and a million ways it could be used while we are here on earth.  I’m fighting with more and more ease at being confident in what I’ve been given and to  just continually go out and use my gift for its purpose.

It hasn’t been easy.  There have been two more girls in my life just like the first one I’ve talked about since then so it’s harder to heal when those forces stay present in your life.  Again, those girls probably don’t know I’m writing about them but their feelings for me have been so strong that they are probably suspicious.  I don’t hate these girls.  Any of them.  I forgive these girls.  It was just very damaging.

Thankfully, the little girl who wounded me so bad in 6th grade apologized to me many years later when we were in late highschool.  She told me she was jealous and that she was always so ashamed and that’s why it took her so long to apologize.  Apologies and forgiveness are very soothing and healing to the soul.  I was thankful for that.

I hadn’t seen or heard from that person in 13 years until recently.  Out of no where I got a message from her on facebook.  It was a nice short message.  The subject: If I was still singing.  I’m sure she has no idea how ironic that was for me and how much she and that same subject matter has effected me since.  But we don’t always know how deep the injuries are we inflict and they are easier to forget when you aren’t the inflicted.  I understand.

So.  Today I find myself with a little girl I fear to send into the treacherous world of 1st through 12th grade.  She will come from two musical parents and I hope she sings so she can give us that spectacular third part harmony when Lance and I sing on our family vacations =0)  There’s still a little part of me that would be afraid for her to have anything about her that stands out.  It’s almost like putting a target on your back in a world where no one wants anyone to have blessings more than they’ve been given. 

I’ll tell her these stories one day.  I’ll tell her that I use to put vegetable soup in the toilet and tell my mom I threw up because I didn’t want to have go to school that day to see what words would be used to gut and ostracize me that particular week.  I’ll tell her those “mean kids” called me one day and tried to ‘befriend’ me and asked me to go to the movies.  I was scared but so desperately wanted to be accepted that I said I would go.  I did all that to hear I was on speakerphone and I heard another kid laughing saying they were going with the “I hate Rebecca” club.  I’ll tell Eden that after that call, I walked into the living room and crumpled in heartbroken tears into my mother’s arms at an age when I was too old and cool to do such a thing.

I’ll tell her she can cry to me when the world and those who inhabit it play rough.  I’ll tell her I’ll protect her.  I’ll remind her of the truth and who God says she is.  Tell her it’s okay to sing.  It’s okay to crumple. And I’ll tell her when it’s all said and done, you’ll be just fine and doing the same thing for your daughter one day in a kitchen somewhere.   

What a life we have to live and hurt through to end up as women to help our children live through all the same things we are still trying to get over. 

I look at her teensy eyes and wonder what her life will bring.  The people she will meet.  The people that will hurt her.  The moments that will define her by monkey bars and in high school hallways and offices as she ages.I wonder who she’ll be and what gifts the Lord has given her to make her special.  I pray she never finds herself hurting alone on a playground at dawn but I know pain will inevitably come somewhere, sometime, somehow, by some person.  And when it does, I’ll be right there with her with dirty knees by the hopscotch squares thanking the Lord that it’s all over when it passes.  What a grace that all things pass and what a God who makes all ugly and damaging things beautiful in its own time.  One day.  One year.  One song at a time.

Chocolate November 3, 2008

I matured five years beyond myself at the age of 9.  Standing nervously at the front door window waiting for him to come, I repeatedly pleaded with my mother not to make me go.  Why I was so afraid, I didn’t know.  After all, I had gone out with him a thousand times before.  He was my father–a good father.  But this was the first time we would spend together since the divorce, and there was something very uncomfortable about making appointments with your parents.  Some how “hanging out” went from a casual pain free excurstion to a “better get the most out of your time today and try to cry” visit. 

Staring blankly out the front door window, trying to single out at least one emotion to deal with, I caught a glimpse of the old family Oldsmobile pulling into the drive.  Without thought I flung the door open and ran down the sidwalk to my dad, thinking that if I hurried it would all be over soon.  Climbling  into the old car, my dad and I began to talk like usual and that should’ve been comforting, but it wasn’t.  Despite all of the things he was saying, all I was really aware of was the nagging presence of hurt in the both of us.  He was smiling, but I knew he was broken.

I don’t remember much about our whereabouts from the time I got into the car that day, to the time I got home.  Maybe that’s because looking back it was insignificant in the light of it all.  What little I do remember was going to the mall and getting a toy megaphone that distorts your voice when you talk.  I remember going to Dairy Queen and getting blizzards together.  But mostly, I remember the ride home.

It was quieter on the way back.  Maybe because learning to say good-bye to your kids for days at a time wasn’t something they taught fathers when you were born at the hospital.  I was quiet because I knew my father was hurting and that I neeeded to take care of him instead of the other way around.  This kind of role reversal usually comes when you’re an adult though, and I was very much a child.  A child wanting to give the same thing I needed…comfort.

Then sitting in silence, I realized what I had been afraid of waiting for him to come pick me up earlier that day.  I heard my father start to cry.  To this day I must have seen at least 100 people cry, but I will never forget the sound of his voice or the look of a face scrunched up in tears, exuding almost as much love as it did pain.  For sons and daughters alike, there is always something about the first time you see “him” cry.

I remember saying only one thing from that moment on.  When he started crying he was eating a chocolate blizzard and he was always made sick by dark chocolates.  So looking up at him while he cried I said, “It’s the chocolates isn’t is it Daddy?”  To the best of my memory he smiled and shook his head.  “Yeah, it’s the chocolate.”

It’s the only time in my life that I can remember really trying to deceive myself.  The truth is I knew why he was crying, and think we both kind of silently accepted that I understood.  He was crying because he was thinking about never being there to walk by our bedroom doors and hear his little girls singing at their tops of their lungs.  Crying because he now had to pick-up his children from what was once his home.  But more than that, he was crying because he had to drop them off.

As we pulled back into the driveway I knew things were different.  I was different.  It was in moments like those when I experienced realization so deep that I lost a part of the innocence of my childhood.  As I watched my dad cry that day I lost the ability to see the world as consisting of only summer vacations, Santa Claus, and perfect days.

Perfect families.

Walking up the sidewalk I realized that parents are human and breakable.  The word “daddy” no longer meant invincible like it did to the heart of a child.   And as I stood on my porch by the door I had been so afraid to leave, as my dad started back to his empty apartment in Louisville, I think we both knew that simply…

 I wasn’t a child anymore.

Birds, Bees, & PTSD October 9, 2008

When I was 8 years old I decided to ask my mother what sex was.  I had recently heard the word virgin while my older brothers and sisters were watching 90210…could this have sparked my curiousity?  We may never know. 

She was stirring a pot of beans at the stove and I said, “What’s sex?”  She may have asked me what I thought it was because I went on to say, “Is it when people roll around in the bed and kiss each other?” 

I’m not really sure what transpired in the next few minutes but I do remember pushing my mom, againtst her will, for a real answer to the  point that she slammed the spoon into the pot and said “IT”…. In unmistakeable words. I never thought it was possible to do something so vile.  I never expected to hear such words over a pot of beans.

I did next what any such person would do.  I went and locked myself in the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror and cried.  Everyone who learned about sex at a young age has the same reaction just moments after hearing about the birds and the bees.  You have the disturbing realization that these people you call mom and dad have been doing this thing.  Who are these people?!  How could they do such unspeakable things?  And at that age you wonder why someone would even want to.  It makes as much sense as saying, “I’m going to put my hand on a burning stove.”  Why?  Why would you do that to yourself?

I must’ve still been a little confused….at least with the anatomy involved.  A famous story in my family is how I came home from a school party in first grade and told my mom about how I had a wonderful time at my class party.  I told her we beat vaginas with a stick.  Almost got it… It was pinatas which is commonly confused with vaginas.  Same thing. 

To be sure I understood what sex was, one night my whole family, all 6 of us, were sitting down in the basement watching a discovery channel show.  At one point in the show they cut to a monkey refuge and talked about mating practices.  Lucky for our family in one of the most awkward family moments of all times, they showed them mating.  I felt like I had the word “sex” on my forehead and that everyone must know that little Rebecca had just learned about this act.  It was okay though because just in case they didn’t, my mom asked me, “Rebecca do you know what they’re doing?”

Yeah.  Thanks.  Is family time over? I want to go cry in the bathroom again because even monkies are doing this outlandish deed. Was I the only one who understood that this thing was evil? I was beginning to think so.  The world was much easier when I could just play with my cabbage patch dolls and not think that cabbage and patch were somewhere….you know….

In an instant my parents became perverts and I became traumatized.

It took me several years to recover.

Small Wooden Houses August 28, 2008

 

Somewhere in a landfill there is a piece of wood etched with washed out names written with curvy, big letters like only the hands of a child can write.  Rachael 1994.  Lauren 1992… all people who came and braved the outdoors with me in our tree house for one night.  More typically, half a night. It was made of the wood that my father used to build it by hand every day for a week or so the summer of my parent’s divorce.  I remember my dad standing on the deck, holding the pieces of wood in his hands and hearing my parents have a quick, sarcastic exchange.  It was one of the only arguements I can remember to this day. 

 

It was where my big sister told me she loved me for the first time.  The first time where we both finally understood the words enough to feel a little uncomfortable from the vulnerability of the statement.  It was the fort above the bush that sprouted the flowers that were yellow because me and my friends would pee on it when we were “camping out” late at night…or at least so I sincerely thought for years.  The shelter I took from the neighbors’ wild dogs. Those dogs would trap me in the there for hours and just wait for me at the bottom.  The stage I belted The Little Mermaid songs from.  On a clear night, my own little planetarium because it had a moon roof so your body was covered but your head was in position to see the sky.

 

I’ll never forget driving past our old house shortly after moving out and seeing it in shattered wood piles at the end of the driveway waiting for the garbage man to pick it up.  I suppose to them it was an eye sore but to me it was the keeper of secrets, the protector of little girls wrapped in pink wooly sleeping bags.

 

However, the bush is still there and it’s still growing yellow flowers so I guess the new family hasn’t let all previous traditions die.

 

Maybe at the end of the day it was just a small wooden house attached to the side of my swing set…

 

But somewhere under old shoes, stinky left-overs, and old newspapers are faded names of innocent little girls that sweetly beg to differ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Williams Ave. August 24, 2008

When I was young, I remember going on walks with my dad around my old neighborhood .  More specifically I remember the walk when I told him, “You know this will be the last time I hold your hand?”  He patted the back of my hand in his and said, “I know.” 

 

I remember when we headed our street and turned into our driveway and let go.  I guess I remember it because it really was the last time and we both knew that it would be. 

 

Looking back, that’s just one of the million things I remember about that house and that time of my life.  Almost every memory I have for well over half my life has that place, that house as the backdrop.  There were about a million birthday parties there: some inside, some in the treehouse out back, and some at different locales. Yeah the skating rink…why do you ask?

 

When I was young and me and my sister got in trouble and got sent to our rooms, we’d whisper from the floor vents, “Is mom mad?” “I don’t know.” “I think she’s crying.”  I had some of the worst fights and the best nights of my life there.  That house saw me learn to ride a bike, shave my legs for the first and last time, drive a car, fall in love, leave for prom, and get my heart broken over and over again. And it watched my family go from 6 down to just me and my dad for the last few years we lived there. It’s where it all happened for me…my life.

 

There are many times that I dream about anything really and it’s set there.  The basement is still haunted and the upstairs is just as we left it.  I still see my bright yellow room with the shelf bordered windows, incense and candles, and friends pictures everywhere. 

 

Leaving that place was hard and I remember it vividly.  The night before I just kept walking around the driveway and up the sidewalk and thinking how if I came tomorrow I’d feel like I was trespassing.  I thought how bizarre it all was too because the place had never been anyone’s but mine.  And I know that’s how many people remember me.  There, in that place.

 

I still drive by our old house from time to time.  I try not to look too creepy but it’s hard not to when I keep creeping passed over and over again.  So much about it has changed.   The owners told us when they moved in that we could come back any time but I’d have a hard time commenting through a cry session.  Plus, what do you say about the country floral curtains I saw through the windows?  I mean there are a lot of sad things about a move.

 

We all have one though.  The place that was like the pacifier of our young adulthood. There is just something about home. Or should I say, that home. I moved out of my childhood home 7 years ago but now that I’m married and I have a family of my own, a family that will only grow as the years go by…I think about how I can make it a place that my kids go back to in their minds over and over again.

 

My last memory there was standing by the huge pine tree at the end of the sidewalk trying to choke back tears and telling my dad, “I’m really going to miss this place.” He just said, “I know.”  As we stood on that driveway that he paved himself and we had our last little moment there, I guess we left the same way we started near the beginning.  Me, still really just a girl, telling her dad how she feels and him understanding.  And as always….

he did.