ABSTRACT
I always knew that something terrible had happened to my mother. She was afraid of everything. She was afraid of dogs. She was afraid to stay alone. Lights had to be on at night, even when we were sleeping. Lurking strangers must be seen or frightened away. She was afraid of men she did not know. When there was a delivery, she would tell me to hide under the bed until he was gone. And when she opened the door to these unfamiliar men who delivered our groceries, she concealed a knife in her pocket, “just in case”. There wasn’t much she wasn’t afraid of and there weren’t many possibilities of wickedness she didn’t prepare for. Before she married, she lived with my grandmother and an aunt and uncle who had a child. I have been told that there was a time when my mother participated in the family Sundays. At ten o’clock in the morning, all those who lived with grandma would lay out tables in the foyer of grandma’s apartment and all the other family members would arrive. Everyone would bring food. After eating, the work for the day began. The agenda was always the same. Every problem that arose over the week for each person was presented and discussed and some resolution or reassuring words followed. Everyone talked. Everyone helped. Decisions were not made and big items were not purchased without being evaluated by this powerful counsel. This was a strong family unit and the members were involved in each other’s lives. I am told that my mother would participate at these events. At some point, though, she stopped participating. It was around the time that she
became afraid of everything. People let my mother be quiet. Perhaps they didn’t even notice the change, her unusual silence. Perhaps they didn’t know what to do about the sudden shift. Perhaps they knew and didn’t know and, at the same time, didn’t want to know. Only later did I discover how much trans-generational history was distilled into my mother’s silence and into my family’s inability to ask, to comment, to inquire. This silence referred back to my mother’s trauma and to the history of my grandmother in the pogroms about which no one spoke. The family may have pushed my mother to marry because they thought that marriage was the solution. She was 28. That was approaching old for singledom in the 1930s. She was fixed up with a man. Everyone at the family table said that he was a good catch. He was sweet and calm, and was described as the kind of person who wouldn’t hurt a fly, the kind of person whose cheeks one would love to pinch. Marriage was not about love in my extended family. All agreed that he was perfect for my mother. He was not scary. He would be patient. He would be a good provider and, besides, it was time for my mom to be on her own. The family grouping all agreed on this one Sunday afternoon. One thing the family tribunal hadn’t counted on: my mother did not like to be home alone at night and this man would be working many nights. The solution: grandma moved in with them. Mom and dad and grandma lived at 109 Elm Hill Avenue while some other family members continued to live at 57 Elm Hill Avenue. Somehow life moved on. I was born. Then I caught “it”. It was as if I was invaded by her emotional state. “It”, the fear that is, was transmitted to me. Within five years I managed to accrue a mountain of them. I had a lot of my mother’s terrors. I was afraid of dogs. I was afraid of men, and I was sometimes even afraid of my father. I would cry a lot. My mother did for me what all the wise family members who made wise decisions never did for her: she put me in therapy and she got a therapist for herself. This was 1949. My therapist and I had an invisible war to engage in which appeared to be linked to my mother’s trauma and my grandmother’s trauma. My internal house was haunted, and my five year old fears were linked to their unresolved emotional shocks and loss. I remember my therapist. She was young and pretty and calm, and she didn’t seem to be afraid. We met in a room full of colorful toys. There was a one-way mirror and my mother told me that she and her therapist would
sometimes watch me play. While there were many play options, I always engaged in one of two activities. I hammered fat wooden round pegs into a piece of wood with round holes. Over and over again I did this. What was my play about? Was I announcing that I knew some secret about forbidden entry of some fat round thing being hammered into a hole? Did I repeat the hammering in an effort to have control of this forbidden entry, this violation, that never should have happened? I wonder now. But then I played. Also I played with the two story dollhouse which was opened on one side. I moved the mother in it. I kept putting her in different places until she was in just the right situation. And I moved the doll-house furniture. I changed which rooms would be near the front door. I made the house safe. And then I made the house even safer. No one was going to enter who didn’t belong. I was making sure of that. I don’t remember talking in my childhood therapy, but I probably did. And, for sure, I got better and I felt understood. I didn’t cry as much. I wasn’t as scared. In time, my tears and my fears were like those of others my age. “It”, the thing I caught, got hammered away. “It”, the thing I caught, moved into nonexistence like some of the dollhouse furniture. Safety and security had been established. I had found a way to tell my story. My mother got better too. Over time her mind was freer. She was there. She, too, had an opportunity to re-arrange, to re-experience, to grieve, and to re-represent. She, too, found free-flowing psychic circulation. And I believe that she faced her trauma in order to release me from permanently inheriting it. What happened to my mother? What made her so fearful? She was 87 years old when she finally told me, and it was many years after I had completed my own adult analysis. She was in hospice at the time of telling. I had been with her by her bedside for about five days. She was too tired to talk and I had talked so much. I had told her everything that I wanted to tell her. I acknowledged what a good mother she had been and how much I loved her and how much I knew she loved me. I acknowledged how much she had given me. There were only truths and tears and deep love in that room. Finally it seemed that there was little else to say. I filled the space by singing songs that I used to sing as a child and she used to sing to me. Mom listened, too weak to do anything else. Although dying, she seemed content. Right before she died, she asked for some chocolate. I had a piece in my pocketbook that was left on my hotel pillow the night before. I melted it in my hand and then I took a q-tip and scraped it in the chocolate. I put
the chocolate covered q-tip in her mouth, her first food in five days. Her eyes opened wide. She told me it was delicious. I offered more. She said she was full. She smiled and then she died. But something happened right before she asked for the chocolate. Before I gave her the treasured sweet, she gave me something. She gave me structure and representation or the gift of her trauma story. It was a one-liner: “I was raped by the dress shop owner when I was 15.” While she had never told me this before, once she told me I knew that she had told me what I had always known. I knew why I had been hammering fat wooden round pegs into a piece of wood with round holes. I knew why I had to make the house safe.
