what matters most is how well you walk through the fire

something has been on my mind lately. it starts with a family reunion that i did not attend on the weekend of july 4th, 2005. sometime in early may my mom called me with some peculiar news. my grandad and grandmom were going to remarry. i've never been close to my grandparents but this news was a little odd considering they had been divorced for many, many years. my mom, as well as myself, thought this was laughable, strange, bizarre. there is so much back-story to my mom and her parents that reciting it all would be quite a chore...and something that i don't feel like going into but i will relate this. my mom was raised in a fire-and-brimstone pentecostal household. mom wasn't allowed to wear make-up, listen to popular music, watch tv...she wore long skirts that had to cover everything, including the ankles...she, and her brothers and sister, went to bed everynight in fear of the rapture...they might awake to find mom and dad gone...gone to heaven and the sinners left on earth to suffer (or something like this)...she vowed to raise her children with something she did not have...the freedom to, or not, worship a god, go to church, etc. the affect all of this had on her is nothing short of child-abuse, in my opinion.....the fear.....the fear....the fire and brimstone.....to raise children in this atmosphere in hard to comprehend. anyway, the remarriage of her mom and dad seemed to be some last ditch effort to "make right with god"....cross your fingers...knock on wood...hope the pearly gates will open. the remarriage also seemed to frame the forthcoming family reunion. frame the gathering with more denial. a denial of the past, a denial of the present, a hope for the afterlife, whatever. most of her siblings (only 2 of the 6 are active in "the church," one is an atheist) thought the remarriage was a joke as well. a month after hearing the remarriage news, and a month before the reunion in reno, my mom calls me again to inform me that we would not be attending the gathering. this was a difficult phone call....she told me that "something happened" when she was a child and after all of these years she was going to take a stand, of sorts. she told me she wanted to tell me what happened...she wanted to tell me in person, not over the phone.......i've visited her a couple times since then but the topic never comes up and i dont want to bring it up....she was, i dont know if she still is, seeing a psychiatrist about the incident(s)....i remember her saying she had "buried the incident" so deep that she had nearly forgotten anything happened.....the D word again - denial. i try not to dwell on whatever happened to mom decades ago....i'm not sure if i want to know...there are so many things that i don't know.........you know, i grew up in an upper class neighborhood in the suburbs and i really thought everything was perfect....i remember (at least i think i do) mom and dad saying they would never divorce (WRONG)....i remember dad accidentally running over the family cat....i remember glancing out of the back window and seeing the neighbor shoot the cat to "put it out of it's misery"...all i remember is seeing a blurry figure raising a rifle...once my mind comprehended what was about to happen i buried my head and heard a POP.....i remember sitting in the moving truck on our final day in that neighborhood (the divorce was finalized) and hearing a horrible cry from inside the empty house...my mom crying, wondering if this, the divorce, the moving, the proof of existence, was indeed the right thing to do...the denial coming home to roost.....i remember moving into a new house, a much smaller house, and mom remarrying too soon....a stranger in the house telling me what to do, expecting respect (everything is cool now, i would like to add).....and i remember, he still does from time to time, dad, his voice cracking from emotion, telling me he never wanted the divorce....tears blur my eyes typing this because in my mind i hear him and his voice, breaking, cracking, he did all he could, he did his best, but sometimes a man's best isnt enough........i remember my mom calling me telling me my sister was in jail...prescription drugs, minus the prescription, passed out in her car at some vacant gas station....i remember my mom calling me the next day, after she bailed her out, "your sister is missing...no one knows where she is, god, is this happening????" months later mom calls again....sister is in jail again........sister is a junkie....."chris (that's me, by the way), i hid a camera and caught your sister stealing pills from my purse...." she's stealing prescription pads from doctors writing bogus prescriptions...[sister is doing much, much better now] i remember being the anchor for my mom during this sister-junkie period....everytime the phone would ring my heart would begin beating a terrible race-car beat, 500 mph, the world would stop, the sound of the television would turn into the color white-invisible-silence...."HELLO?" "oh, i'm sorry, i have the wrong number." "TH-THAT'S O-OKAY." c l i c k.............................. what the fuck happened? me, 9, 10 years old thinking that i was blessed with this perfect life.....nice house, suburbs, teacher's pet, A-B honor roll every grading period, "perfect" family.....chip, chip, chip away at the facade and years later i'm a 27 year-old man feeling like some estranged survivor.....the wreckage no longer smolders. it's still there. like a crucifix on a highway shoulder. it's a reminder.

...and i wouldnt change a thing

mc