My Adolescence: Doors In the Walls of Memory

I have always been envious of people who seemingly can remember with ease detailed memories from their childhood. My sister-in-law is one such person. It never ceases to amaze me the things she can remember about her and Mark’s childhood, as if the past is always present, just at the end of her fingertips.

For me, my childhood has always been a distant land full of fortresses and locked doors. I know that this is largely due to the fact that I had an abusive childhood, and pain is best locked away rather than relived. I didn’t make this decision consciously, to lock away the pain and the memories that went with it. Rather, this decision was made long, long ago by my subconscious. It knew what was best for me. It knew that there were certain things that needed to be locked away and others that deserved to be locked away

Away. Away.

Later in my life, I joined the efforts of my subconscious mind when I joined the Mormon Church. There was so much of my past that seemed shameful, not the least of which was my closeted homosexuality. My solution to this was to look at my past through a Mormon lens, reinterpreting and filing away that which was unpleasant or unseemly. In consequence, I lost still more memory.

Still later in my life, I came to a point where I had to deal in some way with the abuse of my childhood. Memories seemed to explode out of me; not in my mind and memory, but in my body, e.g.. heart palpitations, flinging my arms up in front of my face to protect it from the belt. At first, I couldn’t understand what was happening. Then, I understood, thanks in large part to an incredible physician who was also a very wise counselor. 

I searched for memories of abuse and found that other memories, good ones, had been locked away with the bad ones. It was if I stood before a fortress of memory. No matter how many times I pounded on the door, it refused to budge. There was no answer from the other side.

I turned to my older siblings. I had never talked with them about what had happened, nor had they with me. We had never sat down together, all five of us, to speak truth (nor would we ever do so). We all hid it away – until I started making phone calls. Even then, it was difficult to speak of it; but they did. Some of my own memories returned. Most – stubbornly – lay locked away. Finally, I turned in sadness and walked away.

When I came out in the fall of 2010, I returned once more to the fortress and knocked. For the first time in my life, through the medium of my Invictus Pilgrim blog, I took off the “Mormon lens” and wrote honestly and openly of my sexuality and how it had all began – at least of what I could remember. I started with my childhood then progressed through my adolescence to early adulthood. 

But there was only so much I could remember. Unfortunately, the period in which I went through puberty was also the period in which my parents were going through a very messy and painful separation that would eventually lead to their divorce. Because of this, those two years seemed unreachable in my memory, no matter how hard I tried to remember - until the last couple of weeks. 

A couple of months ago, I began working in earnest on a memoir of the year I came out. I knew the first couple of chapters would be the most difficult to write since they would delve into my past. I finished a rough draft of the chapter dealing with the period from the time I joined the Mormon Church until I got married. 

Then, I turned to an even more difficult chapter – that recounting how I came to realize that I was attracted to boys instead of girls and how I “dealt” with this knowledge over the course of the next 12 years of my life. Once again, I went back to the land of memory and knocked on the fortress door. Still locked. Still no answer.

This time, however, I decided to walk around the perimeter of the fortress to see if there was another door. I found one, turned the knob and pushed. To my surprise, it opened. A few “fresh” memories came back. I started exploring and found that I had found an outer ring in the fortress’ defenses. Soon, I found another door. It was locked, but I walked on until I found another one. It opened, disclosing more memories.

And so it has gone over the course of the past couple of weeks. It’s difficult for me to express how much this progress means to me. It has not only brought increased understanding of the little gay boy I was (unbeknownst to me at the time); it has also brought joy at remembering and hope that more will yet be divulged. 

Though I know that the past will never be at my fingertips as it is with Mark’s sister, I have hope that the day will come when it will be much closer to hand and I won’t be afraid of it anymore.

Chilling in Vancouver: Granville Island and UBC

We spent Black Friday in blue Vancouver. Chilled to the bone. The weather was gloriously beautiful, something that rarely happens in Vancouver anytime between October and, um, June. Perfectly clear blue skies. Blue water. Blue, blue, blue. And cold.

We headed into the city, and our first destination was Granville Island. This had always been a favorite destination of my family during return visits to Vancouver since moving to Utah 18 years ago. Could it possibly be that long? When we lived there in the late 80's and 90's, we rarely went there; or at least I didn't. I was busy going to law school and working. It was only once we left that we came back.

Granville Island is a special destination. It is one of those places, such as Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco or Pike Place Market in Seattle, that captures and concentrates the essence of a city. It is a place where memories are made. It is in the heart of the city, yet removed from the bustle of downtown, nestled against False Creek with views past the Burrard Street Bridge to Stanley Park and Burrard Inlet. The water taxis bustling back and forth. The seagulls. The variety of the Market, the quaintness of the various shops, studios and places of business.

Hannah and Hazel accompanied us, and it was fun watching Hazel chase pigeons outside - at least until the cold drove us inside the Granville Island Market.

Nathan took this panorama shot of the city and the Granville Street Bridge with his iPhone. Pretty cool.

Nathan

Hannah

Later, we headed out to the University of British Columbia where I went to law school in the late 80's. The university is situated on a point of land on the far west side of Vancouver and offers beautiful views of Howe Sound, Burrard Inlet and the Georgia Strait. I recall sitting in lectures watching ferries go back and forth from Nanaimo (on Vancouver Island) and Horseshoe Bay. Again, the visibility and clarity resulting from the cold weather offered us breathtaking views.

The building where I went to law school has since been torn down and a new building erected in its place. But at least I was able to show Mark the site and a bit of the campus.

Graduation Picture

Thence over to where we lived in student housing during the years I was in school, where our first two children were born. Of course, everything is a bit different now, but the same structures are there.

Me and Sarah, my oldest, chilling during those years

Baby Adam

Our home

My study alcove during my third year in law school

The way it looks today

It was good for Mark to see all of this. As I looked forward to this trip, I had anticipated some sort of healing in my memory bank of those years. But it was while we were out at UBC that I realized that the trip had more to do with now than then. As Mark was able to see the places where stories I have told him about my past took place, I think he gained new insight into who I am, just as visiting Japan last year afforded me new insights into who Mark is. He better understands choices I had made back then: to marry, to have children, to commit myself to a life in which Mormonism was everything. 

As I've written before, I don't regret those decisions. I can't. I made them; life happened. There were some good times, but a lot of bad times. I wish things could have been different, but they weren't.

Meanwhile, I count my blessings ... for Mark, for my children and where they are at, for the growth I've experienced over the past several years. For where I'm at. Despite challenges, life is good.

About Time: The Landscape of Cancer and of Memory

I have often told Mark that sometimes I write blog posts for my children, sometimes I write them for him, and I often write them for others. But just as often, I write them for me. There are times when I think perhaps I have shared too much of myself on this blog. But I come back to this basic point: I write because something inside of myself needs to write and to share. I usually don't receive comments, but this doesn't bother me, either. The important thing with some posts is simply that I write.

This is one of those posts.

On Thanksgiving Day afternoon, we decided to watch a DVD. We were working on dinner - well, Mark and our daughter Hannah were working on dinner. Nathan, our son, was playing with Hazel on his iPad. I was watching them. Cary, our son-in-law, was at work because American Thanksgiving - for some strange reason - is not a holiday in Canada. Hannah picked out the movie, "About Time." It is one she had spoken of before and obviously loved. She wanted to share it with us, and we were happy to watch it.

I personally enjoyed the unfolding plot of the movie. For those who are not familiar with it, it tells the story of an English family whose male members have the ability - once they turn 21 - to travel back into time. The story focuses on the only son of the only surviving male member of the family. Shortly after the son turns 21, his father brings him into his study and tells him the family secret. The son is incredulous - at first - but then tests what his father has just told him and finds that it works. 

The father - who appears to be independently wealthy - says that he has used the gift to feed his passion for literature. Fair enough ... though exactly how he does that is not spelled out. The son decides to use it for what he seeks most in life, i.e., to find a woman whom he can love who will, in turn, love him.

The movie, for me, had two primary plot lines that run more or less parallel throughout most of the film. The first: boy seeks woman, boy falls in love with woman, boy marries woman and creates a family. The second: boy loves his father, father loves his son, boy and father share the gift of time travel, boy says an unexpected good-bye to a father who has filled his life with light and love and laughter. A third plot line involves the struggles of the son's free-spirited sister to find love and light in her own life, but that line did not resonate as much with me as the other two.

The first story line was nice and romantic and fairly straightforward. The second, less so. I was already having my own dark thoughts about aspects of the movie when a curve ball was thrown: the father was diagnosed with a terminal illness. No one saw this coming. Not even Hannah. But, the ball was thrown, and all of us sat staring at the screen as the effects of that throw hit home.

No, no, no. This was too close to home. No, no, no, no, no. Please, no. Too late. We were there. I started to silently cry. I felt like I wanted to regurgitate all the pent-up anger, hurt, worry and grief that had  been walled off from my functioning self.

Mark, too, started to cry. Something about the movie had pierced his shell as well. I could see it in his eyes: the fear, the sorrow, the pain. No matter how positive we are, no matter how much for which we have to be thankful, no matter how hard we try to live in the moment, there are moments like this when, once an avalanche of grief has been triggered, there is little one can do to stop it until it comes to rest after cascading downward.

The tumbling grief also triggers avalanches in others. Nathan and Hannah were also affected. She was so apologetic about the movie. She had forgotten about this aspect of the movie. The eyes of grief change one's perception of the world and things in it.

But there was another aspect of the movie that saddened and depressed me before we had arrived at the plot twist involving the father. The film had reminded me - especially since I was in Vancouver where we had lived the first ten years of our marriage and where our five older children were born - of what a better dad I wished I could have been to my older children.

There were scenes in the movie that beautifully depicted the tender love between the father and his son. I found myself wishing that I had had the gift of time when I was a young father, to be able to go back and fix things. I realized while caught in this reverie, however, that what I really needed to have the ability to do back then was fix myself, and that was not possible via travel backward in time. Rather, that work would have to be carried out day by day and on into the future.

I have thought much, during our time here in Vancouver, about those years here. About my struggles. About the migraines I suffered on a weekly basis. About the constant tension in my marriage. About the financial constraints. About other frustrations and challenges. About regrets. I have occasionally thought that things could have been different during those years if only ... But things were as they were, and as much as I might like to will them different, they weren't.

It is time for me to make peace with the past. In the end, all we really have is today.

Of Memory, Toasts and Hometown Girls

Three of my sister's friends who had grown up with Martha in our hometown of Carmi, Illinois made the trip to North Carolina this past weekend to help her celebrate her special day when she would be "hooded," receiving her PhD in French Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I am quite sure I had not seen any of these women at least since 1976, when I graduated from high school. Back then, since I was ahead of Martha by eight years in school, these girls had just finished fourth grade.

I was a little envious of Martha that she had maintained contact with these women over the years. Due to circumstances in my life, I have never attended a high school reunion and have only recently began to reestablish contact through Facebook with some of my high school friends. It turned out to be an amazing amount of fun to sit down last Friday evening with them, as well as with Martha's husband Koen and his parents, Greetje and Theo, who were visiting from the Netherlands.

Mark took this picture. Starting with me (blue shirt) and proceeding clockwise: Martha, Pam, Koen, Karen, Stephanie, Koen's daughter, Isa, and Greetje and Theo.

Greetje and Theo

Given that there were five people from Carmi sitting around that table, the conversation inevitably turned toward - you guessed it - Carmi. We talked about where they had lived in town, people we had known, teachers, and other subjects. As I listened and participated in the conversation, I realized that images were starting to flood my mind. Neighborhoods. Buildings. Schools. Teachers. 

The red balloon indicates where Carmi is.

As I have written about here, I have struggled with memory of my childhood and youth for years. When I first began investigating the abuse that had happened to me as a child, I had to rely on memories of my older siblings and former sister-in-law to piece together what had happened. There was so much I couldn't remember. And even when they told me things that had happened to me, I usually had no independent memory of the incident. It was as if large chunks of my childhood and adolescence were frozen, and I couldn't access them.

I think that my memory has also suffered because I simply have not been around the places and people I lived in and with. This became apparent - which I wrote about here - when two of my college fraternity brothers came to Mark's and my commitment ceremony in August 2012. They easily remembered and talked about events in college of which I had no recollection, and I think that the reason for this was that they had maintained contact over the years and lived in proximity both the University of Illinois, where we went to school, and to each other and other fraternity brothers.

Me and Pam

This is one of the reasons why last Friday evening was special to me - images of long ago started to cascade from seemingly locked memory banks. And I knew I was seeing these images through the window of my *own* memory, rather than someone else's.

Why do I care about this? What possible relevance could people and places from 40-50 years ago have to my life today? Because of my life experience. Because of fragmentation. Because I feel that I have left bits of myself in numerous places along the road of life, and I welcome the opportunity to feel more whole, more integrated.

The Hometown Girls: Karen, Stephanie and Pam

Plus, it was a just a whole lot of fun. There was a lot of laughter around that patio table that afternoon. Talking about junior high teachers and high school teachers. Remembering incidents, such as the time that a whole bunch of kids were sledding down an embankment and out over frozen backed up water from a flooded Little Wabash River, doing jumps off what we thought was a log - only to discover that it was the body of a dead man frozen in the ice. (Okay, that was pretty weird.)

Before long, it was time to go pick up my daughter, Rachel, at the train station in Durham. She had taken the train down from Philadelphia, where she has been working as a nanny since last September. Amtrak is certainly not Japan Rail; the train was going on two hours late. But she and I had been in contact via text, and we knew when she was due to (finally) arrive. It was so good to see her again! By the time we got back to Martha and Koen's house, it was time to eat dinner and continue the party celebrating Martha's hooding.

That part of the evening was, again, so, so much fun.

Rachel, Me and Mark

Rachel, me, Greetje and Mark

Koen's beautiful daughter, Isa

Pam and Stephanie

At some point, as we were gathered around the kitchen table, a toast was proposed to Martha on her very commendable achievement. Someone joked that everyone needed to remember to clink everyone else's glasses; otherwise, it would result in seven years of bad luck. That's when Pam pointed out that the clinker and the clinkee must also make eye contact; otherwise, this would result in seven years of bad sex. Lots of laughter at that one, and we all made a point of making and holding eye contact. This was carried to extreme lengths once the shots of limoncello started, as evidenced by the picture below.

Koen and Martha steal a kiss

It was a magical evening.

The House of Spiritual Belonging

I wrote yesterday about John O'Donohue's critique - in his book, Anam Cara - about how we see. Continuing his discussion of how we relate to the world through our senses, today I'm quickly sharing some passages relating to speaking, smelling and breathing.

Words

After bemoaning the loss in much of modern society of the rich experience that eating a meal used to provide, O'Donohue notes a broader metaphor that today's fast food society provides:  

"The fast-food metaphor provides a deep clue to the poverty of sensibility and lake of taste in modern culture ... Many of the words we use are of the fast-food spiritual variety. These words are too thin to echo experience; they are too weak to bring the inner mystery of things to real expression. In our rapid and externalized world, language has become ghostlike, abbreviated to code and label. Words that would mirror the soul carry the loam of substance and the shadow of the divine."

Again, I am moved by O'Donohue's prose. Truly, his words echo experience and reflect deep thought and insight.

On Fragrance and Memory

"Experts," writes O'Donohue, "tell us that smell is the most faithful of all the sense in terms of memory. The smells of one's childhood still remain within." I found this a fascinating thought. 

As anyone who reads this blog regularly will know, the subject of memory is important to me. For so much of my life, most of my memories of my early life have been filed away somewhere deep within my brain. The image of the Room of Requirement (from Harry Potter), where things are hidden, comes to mind. For more times that I care to remember, I have stood before that stone wall that conceals the Room and have tried to will the door to that Room to appear, only to face the disappointment of its refusal to materialize.

But, it seems like more and more, flashes of memory are coming back to me. Yesterday, for example, Mark and I went skiing here in Utah for the first time this year. As we rode the lift, images flashed in my mind of when I used to go skiing with my fraternity brothers during college at Big Powderhorn Mountain in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan: the room where I rented my gear in the lodge; the bunny hill there; the chair lifts; the view from the top; etc. In a sense, these flashes are like smells that waft through the air, savored briefly before they dissipate and disappear.

On Breath

"Traditionally," writes O'Donohue, "the breath was understood as the pathway through which the soul entered the body." He continues:

"[Among other things], the dynamic of breathing also takes in the deep world of prayer and meditation, where through the rhythm of the breath you come down into your own primordial level of soul. Through breath meditation, you begin to experience a place within you that is absolutely intimate with the divine ground. Your breathing and the rhythm of your breathing can return you to your ancient beginning, to the house, as Eckhart [Meister Eckhart] says, that you have never left, where you always live: the house of spiritual belonging."

Meditation is something I have always struggled with. The few times I have tried it, it seemed contrived and artificial. But O'Donohue's comments have provided me with a new way to look at this practice, as have other material I have been reading over the past couple of months. I'm looking forward to putting theory into practice after the holidays when things have settled down a bit in our lives.

Tillich: Of Grace, Providence and Cheeseburgers

I grew up in a small town in Southern Illinois called Carmi. Fourteen miles away, just across a rickety toll bridge over the Wabash River, was New Harmony, Indiana - a site of several communal living experiments in the first half of the 19th century. 

Mainly New Harmony was a place one drove through on the way to Evansville - the largest city within easy driving distance of Carmi. My parents would occasionally go there to shop for groceries, and it was here that I went to see a podiatrist who told me that I had the flattest feet in seven counties. When I was in high school, friends and I would occasionally go there to see a new release movie. This is where, for example, I saw the "Exorcist."

The bridge across the Wabash

The toll booth on the Illinois side of the river

I heard recently that this old bridge is going to be torn down. Back in the 70's, I think the toll was 25 cents. There are probably all kinds of stories that could be told about this bridge and toll booth. One that I recall was when Ruth Ann Smith, my employer when I worked as a bus boy at Two Tonys Smorgasbord in Carmi, told us how, instead of paying a quarter (or whatever it was) she handed the toll booth operator a cheeseburger and drove on.

But I digress. When I was a kid, my family occasionally went to New Harmony, and I recall the "Roofless Church" that is pictured in the lead photo. I also vaguely recall a park adjacent to the church dedicated to the memory of the German Lutheran theologian, Paul Tillich. In those days, I had no idea who Paul Tillich was, nor did I know that his ashes are interred in the garden. (Why I don't know - yet.)

I was introduced to Paul Tillich in my freshman year in college at Illinois Wesleyan University. (It's interesting ... I have written before about memory. As I have been thinking about that year at Wesleyan, memories have come back of hallways, of classrooms, of professors - places and people that I haven't thought about in years and thus thought that I had lost my memory of that time of my life. It is so exhilarating to experience the thrill of memory!)

That year really opened my mind to a lot of new ideas and concepts as I took Humanities classes and a religion class called "Man and His Quest for Meaning." It was in the latter that I first heard the terms "Christian existentialist" and "Christian Humanism" and read some writings of Tillich, who was a German Lutheran theologian and one of the most profound religious thinkers of the 20th century.

I was so taken with Tillich's writings that I read more than was assigned in class and even purchased the first volume of Tillich's Systematic Theology to read over the summer. But the following fall, I transferred to the University of Illinois, joined a fraternity and largely abandoned what I had found so exhilarating the previous year. What residual interest I had was extinguished when I joined the Mormon Church at age 24.

It wasn't until I came out three years ago and started on my (rather rapid) journey out of the Mormon Church that I once again encountered these words of Tillich, which resonated deeply:

This is only the last couple of sentences of a passage that speaks of grace and acceptance, both divine and by oneself - a passage that I plan to revisit and perhaps blog about.

In my reading over the past couple of months, I have run into numerous references to Tillich, most recently a couple of days ago in my reading in Catholic Means Universal, by David Richo. In writing about faith, Richo quoted the following passage from Tillich's book, The Shaking of Foundations:

"Faith in divine providence is the faith that nothing can prevent us from fulfilling the ultimate meaning of our existence. Providence does not mean a divine planning by which everything is predetermined ... Providence means that there is a creative and saving possibility implied in every situation, which cannot be destroyed by any event. Providence means that the demonic and destructive forces within ourselves and our world [such as those unleashed during the Second World War] can never have an unbreakable grasp upon us, and that the bond which connects us with the fulfilling love can never be disrupted."

Bust of Tillich in New Harmony, Indiana

Richo added his own thoughts about "providence." "Actually," he writes, "providence means that in the face of suffering, cruelty, death and injustice, we have it in us to go on loving ... It is not that external situations rectify themselves but that interior powers of love remain intact no matter what. Our capacity to love surveys the pain and abuse we have experienced."

This, I think, is a large part of where faith comes in. We, I, need to have the faith that, no matter what,  we have it in us to love, to go on loving, to grow in our capacity to love.

I'm grateful that I have discovered Tillich once again after all these years. This post turned out entirely different than what I had originally contemplated, and it is a grace that, through this post, I have continued to re-establish contact with and embrace who I was before I joined the Mormon Church.