A Child is the Greatest Gift
I found a box of old pictures my mother had that I didn't know about. I am shocked that my parents took so many pictures of me in the 1950's. From the traditional baby in the bathwater to typing at a typewriter.
What impressed me was two things. First I smiled and looked very happy. I was a very happy baby. We were poor and I slept in a drawer instead of a crib.
And second, I was beautiful. I never knew this. All through my youth I was told that I was good looking but I didn't believe it because I felt awkward.
Later as I got older all my pictures showed a frown and unhappiness. Some of it may have been the awkward age of preteen growing up but I think it was something else. I think it was the immaturity of my parents who didn't realize what a gift they had with a beautiful child. They were too young to value this gift and instead my father treated me as a possession that constantly disappointed him in his vision of how he wanted to present me as an extension of him to the world. My mother loved me and cuddled me non-stop but early on she worked very hard and then went to school nights. The worst time came later at the age of six.
I was six years old when my mother moved my father out of the house (today I am very proud of her for doing that) for cheating on her (it took me into my twenties before I figured that out). But it was the next 7 years that changed my life. It was the time from when they were separated until they were divorced. When my father who no longer lived with us came to our house everyday in his big Cadillac at ten to six every night. It was when my mother sent me out to talk to him because she wasn't speaking to him. I was sent to ask for money for child support. At six years old until thirteen years old I was sent to carry messages from my mother to my father and had to endure his wrath that he wanted me to pass back to my mother. I remember this time as a time when I cried everyday. He would spew venomous anger and threats at my mother who I loved until I cried and then he would stop. I then had to go back inside the house and answer my mother who asked, "well what did he say? Did he give you the money?". Finally, my mother hired a lawyer and garnisheed his wages which again made him very upset. He then started threatening to kill my mother and this was a time when I peed in bed and had horrible nightmares of my mother being in an accident.
No, my parents who both loved me were too young to appreciate the beautiful gift they received and instead they used this gift as a weapon in their anger against each other. They didn't talk directly to each other, they used me as the go between to unleash their anger on each other.
I see this very clearly in the pictures. You can see the years of crying in my face. You can see the stolen innocence, the robbed youth and their unawareness of what they were doing and how they were hurting their gift of a child. You can see my beaming happiness turned to a look of despair and resigned sadness and unhappiness that would then follow me for the rest of my life.
I am not saying that this was all bad. It had the benefit of making me grow up faster, of understanding selfishness and anger and later of being able to negotiate multi million dollar contracts in my work. It made me introspective and quiet. It made me afraid of getting married and having a family. It also made me never want to do this to a child ever. When I married and then divorced I was absolutely sure to never criticize my ex-wife to my daughter, to my gift.
We all have lived through lost innocence and stolen youth and it has shaped who we are today. But, it just struck me what a beautiful happy full of life child I was. I see what a gift I was to my parents. And how they were too young to appreciate their gift. And how they didn't realize the damage they were doing to this gift.