Resilience

Childhood is a race. Endure, learn and survive—that’s what it was all about—for me anyway.

I don’t remember my first grade teacher at St. Brigid’s in New Jersey. Not her name, her mien or what she looked like. Frankly, I don’t recall anything about that year of school but I must’ve learned something.

In second grade we lived in Providence, Rhode Island. I went to to two different schools that year. The first was a crowded, rambunctious public school, teaching lessons I’d learned in first grade. My mother managed to slide us into Saint Sebastian’s—late admissions. The only thing I recall from there is being picked on by obnoxious little blonde girls.

In third grade we lived in Townsend, Massachusetts—a very small town with no Catholic schools. I got to wear pretty dresses instead of an ugly old uniform. The teacher wasn’t a mean old nun in a habit reeking of starch. I wasn’t afraid of school or the other kids that year. I loved everything about Townsend. I even had my own room with a secret, small hidey hole. Daddy explained to me that our house had been on the Underground Railroad. He told me about slavery and the people who escaped and those who’d helped. Our house was a hero. My bedroom was a hero. I felt safe in Townsend. 

In fourth and fifth grade we lived in Western Pennsylvania—far away from Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Mary Ann, Uncle Nick, Auntie Carol and my favorite cousins. People spoke funny. Aunt was pronounced ant. Soda was called pop. Route was rowt instead of root. Frappes were ice cream sodas, not milkshakes. The place was wholly alien aside from the Catholic school where most of the nuns, like every other Catholic school, were mean as MAGAts on meth.

In sixth and seventh grade we were in Bloomington, Indiana. The landscape was flat, flat, flat and there weren’t enough trees. The only good things I remember about Bloomington are…okay, I don’t have any favorite memories from there.

I felt invisible (except to the bullies). I remember wandering alone, aimlessly, getting stuck in a mud hole in an abandoned construction site that I’d decided to explore. I freed myself but not my favorite shoes. They were deep in the sucking earth. I figured my mother would pitch a fit so I snuck back into the apartment, rinsed out my muddy socks and wore an old, too small pair of shoes thereafter. Mother never noticed. I was invisible at home as well as school.

Daddy took us to see Fantasia while we were there—I fell madly in love with classical music. We saw 2001: A Space Odyssey—it was gorgeous. The music, the soundtrack slayed me. I saw Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet and developed my first crush…on Shakespeare. Okay, Bloomington wasn’t all bad.

And then we moved back to that little town in Western Pennsylvania. I thought the kids I’d known in fifth grade would remember me, I wouldn’t be starting all over again. Wrong. I’d been forgotten (purposely and not). I felt like a ghost in the junior high halls. Then the bullies homed in on me until my senior year. Graduation was escape.

You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only choice.
~ Bob Marley