I do not now or have I ever found truth to be self-evident. Truth is as elusive as lies. Just when you searched the depth of your soul for truth and you are ready to grasp reality, the shade comes down and you are surrounded by darkness and doubt. I think my father loved my sister and I guess he loved me but I think he loved her more. I was in the forth grade, just beginning to slip into the world of other people's imaginations when it dawned on me that I trusted only myself about matters that I couldn't understand. I listened to no one but I heard my books and saw nature still I felt alone. My mother was weak and neurotic, my father was impulsive and impatient. I learned early that my existence was unreassuring. I surmised early that religion was no comfort, that love was not unconditional and that safety was best found in my worrisome world away from the incompetence of adults. I tried the best that I could to glue some semblance of security into life. I was careful to out finesse the truth that always eluded me. That truth that quickly turned into darkness and doubt. I am not sure that I loved my father, maybe I pitied him. I loathed my mother but I loved her. I think I began condescending to her when I was four. When a four year old falls into a world of illness and ineptitude and a new born baby creeps into the scene and no one takes care of anyone else and no one is in control, you look for an escape hatch.
My dad didn't not come home from the war until I was almost two years old. Prior to his coming home, my mom and I stayed with my grandparents. My mother got pregnant immediately, my father drank from the effects of a bad war, which set the stage for Christmas 1947. Mother was in bed, Daddy was in the kitchen fixing breakfast, I had a new doll and buggy that I had pushed in front of the little open gas stove that kept our apartment warm, when the flames caught my night gown. My mother had her baby and they tell me that it was a hydroceplus baby and only lived two days. They left the baby in her room and it never cried and finally quit breathing. My third degree burns became very infected. I spent six weeks in a burn unit and after extensive skin grafts I went home. I can remember that my parents were still paying my hospital bills when I was six years old. My little sister was named Janet and was buried in a little casket. She had a small tombstone with a lamb on it so I know that she was, even though I never saw her. Work was hard to find for the many veterans that came home from the war, even decorated ones like my dad so we moved to my dad's home state of Kentucky. My mother's illness worsened and when my new sister was born and we named her Diane I knew then that things would get worse. Like the mountains that beat my mother down, the responsibility of caring for a new baby fell to those around her. She couldn't relate to my father's people or his old life. My father got a job driving a truck which meant that he worked odd hours and long shifts. Sometimes my dad would take my sister and I out in the country where his people lived. We would stay until my mother was better. One day mother bought a set of classics and a set of encyclopedias, and a piano. Mother read to me and we cried about the children in the woods that had no parents and we cried for Gerda and Kay and the Snow Queen that had a sliver of ice in her heart. We took piano lessons together and for a while Brahms and Schubert made her better. I started first grade and it got cold so my mother and I rode a bus to Huntington, WV to find a coat for school. The coat was red velvet with white fur trim. I wore it home on the bus. I wore it to school and played Dale Evans and Roy Rogers in my velvet coat. My sister was growing and beginning to crawl. One day when I came home from school she was in the kitchen and had pulled every thing out of the cabinets and made such a mess with flour and sugar every where. My mother was asleep. I loved the my aunts that lived in the country with a dirt road and no bath room or running water but my mother warned me that if anything ever happened to her not to go live with them but to take my baby sister and go to her people in Arkansas. When we were at my aunts and they watched my sister, I could play. Imagine, being six and having the world to explore with no one to caution you. I could climb trees and wade in the creeks and roll down the hill in my velvet coat.
My mother taught me beauty and sadness. My father taught me independence and determination. My sister taught me responsibility and love. And my aunts taught me the gentle kindness of mountain women.
I grew up and became a part of it all. Life was still hard but I wasn't shackled by my background. My scars didn't show and truth didn't matter so much in the face of kindness and grace. There is no escape hatch short of a bullet to the heart. We are what we are.
I took seriously my right to be lucky, and I was.