Falling Up 5: Canyon child

When I crossed the field above our house some mornings, dew hung on the spiderwebs in the wild oats by the path, sparkling like strings of rainbows.

At the bus stop, there was a creek bed with large and small sand stones. We would hunt for small colored ones, blues and pinks mostly, and draw pictures on the bigger rocks. Once there was a hummingbird nest and we would very carefully look at it everyday, not touch, until the eggs hatched and the babies grew and left.

During recess we often hunted lizards. Bluebellies were most common, but I liked the little sand colored lizards. You had to be careful with the alligator lizards, they bit.  They weren't venomous or anything, but when they clamped on they wouldn't let go, and it really hurt. You had to run them under water to get them to release. A good teacher was one who would let us keep them in our desks, as long as we did our work.

There was a type of flower that a friend showed me, blueish on a long stalk.  If you dug up the root bulb you could scrape it against a rock at the creek and it would foam up just like soap.  When we packed our lunch and stayed out all day, we washed our hands before we ate.

There was a bank covered in bushes that I knew about.  Once you were under the bushes, there were trails, though you couldn't stand up under there.  We called them fox trails. It felt like a very hidden safe place.

We didn't play Cowboys and Indians, just Indians.  We gathered grains and seeds and ground them on rocks.  We were peaceful.

We knew our neighbors.  We knew Mr. and Mrs Robinson and sometimes we would stop and to see their parrots. I knew Mrs. Morgan. Sometimes I would stop by and she would offer me tea. She gave me a stuffed poodle once that had been her daughter's. Almost every house, a mile straight up the hill to the bus stop, I knew someone at somewhat. Even when I walked alone, I always felt safe.

All the girls were in Girl Scouts, even the Catholic family that didn't go to our school.  Most of the boys were in Boy Scouts.  

But the canyon was, and always had been, a little different. At one time Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger had lived there.  In the 50's there were beatniks. In the 60's it became one of the grooviest places outside of San Francisco.  The kids I went to school with, many of them were artists and musicians, and writers. I knew gay and lesbian couples just as people I knew before I even knew what that meant. My dad sold a house he bought and fixed up to two men who were raising some adopted sons together - in the sixties.  If anyone in my community had a problem with it, I never heard about it.

In some ways it was the most typical Wonder Years type childhood, with air raid drills and PTA. But it was so much more. Like out Halloween carnival.

We had the best game booths, and a cake decorating contest, and tickets and prizes.  But the best part was the costume contest.  I don't know how to explain it, people went all out.  One year my friend's little sister won; she was a giant witch's hat. One year we had a marching band leading the costume parade. If someone showed up in a store bought costume, everyone felt sorry for them, like they had a black eye or something. 

When you grow up running those canyon hills, you learn an independence of spirit and a unique appreciation for the lessons of nature that last a life time. And you also grow up understanding that we are here by permission, mother earth can stir and clear us away just like that.  Anyone who grows up in Southern California Mountains knows, I've seen fire and I've seen rain.

These are two lessons my feet learned.  When you are walking on rocks across a creek, you keep you weight and balance on the back foot and test the next rock before you trust it and then gently shift, but keep that security of the last rock before you fully trust the next one.  If you need to go down a steep bank, you can slide down on your butt and look silly, pick you way down slowly and maybe end up on your butt anyway (or worse, your face).  Or, if you are brave enough, you can spread you arms for balance, let yourself begin to fall forward, then let you feet run to catch up.  It is really scary, and sometimes you still fall, but it is also one of the most powerful feelings in the world.  Caution and unrestrained risk, and the discernment to know which to use when.

Falling Up 4: Revelation

I was bored out of my mind. Any 6yo would be, waiting in the doorway of the gas station garage while some work was being done on my mom's car.  She had a chair, but I was just standing, hopping around, and bored. So I started pretend races.

At that time races were a big deal at school, who was faster, and my friend Lila won almost all of them. I did not. In any race, I was most likely to trip and fall on my face. But in pretend races ...

I asked my mom to do the ready, set, go, and I raced across the space of the open garage door. I was racing against Lila, and I won! Except I didn't. My mom declared Lila the winner. Because my mom believed in telling the truth, and she knew the truth.

Years later, when I was going through the process of getting in touch with my emotions, I remembered this. Everything I couldn't feel at the time, the hurt and frustration and the deep desire to just have my mom believe in me, it all came up. Every last feeling, fresh in the heart of that little girl, and I cried until I was swollen and numb.

I don't want to make this a whiney account of all the ways I was made to feel less. I don't want to go on for pages about missing affection, the liberal use of switch and belt, and the because-I-said-so rules. These were all pretty standard for the times. 

What wasn't standard was the complete inconsistency. My mom wasn't cruel; just tired, distracted, and painfully practical. But my dad, I never knew. I would come home from school and he would be out on a job or asleep on the couch watching TV with a book open on his chest (no, I'm not kidding and don't dare change channels) or he would be cooking dinner while doing some frenzied project, or he would be angry and yelling about everything, or he would be (rarely) nice, laughing, singing, telling stories. We would eat in the living room, except when we ate around the table like a proper family. We would go visit relatives, then he would tell me how we were really better than them.  He would also sometimes tell me things about my friends parents, things a child didn't need to know about drunk driving charges or previous marriages.  

And his mood could change in a moment. I remember once when we were eating at the table. One moment he was teasing me about something, we were laughing. Then suddenly he was yelling that I was laughing at him and he was standing up and undoing his belt to whip me. I had no idea why or where it changed.

My had grown up in a very strict southern pentecostal religion, while my mom had been presbyterian. He did not believe that religion should be pushed on a child, but there was still a family and community standard based on convenient bits and pieces of the Bible, especially don't use God's name, don't lie, and obey your parents. 

Sometimes when I visited my Grandma I would go to Sunday school at her church.  One summer, the year I turned 10, I was going to go two weeks in a row, so I took on the task of memorizing the assigned verse. Grandma even gave me a little New Testament that I could keep. 

The verse was Colossians 3:17 in the King James Version. "And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him." But I was a reader, so I kept reading:

18 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.

20 Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.

Yeah, yeah, obey your parents. Then the next verse, "21 Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged." What? God has rules for Fathers, too? And he isn't supposed to be making me angry on purpose, like the way he would sometimes push me to argue and then either be proud or beat me?

Sometimes I get in discussions about the Bible. Some people think that it is no longer relevant, or valuable only as ancient literature. I have spent over 50 years now in perusing, studying and being taught about this book. I understand the criticisms, a discussion for another day. But one thing I can tell you about this document, it can sometimes provide the greatest truths just when they are most needed. Like that moment in my life.

That was the moment in my life when I began to think that maybe things weren't supposed to be this way. I began to think that maybe God knew how hard this was, how wrong this was. In that moment, on the basis of a Bible verse, the true seeds of rebellion were planted in my heart.