Soul Mosaic

Variations on punishment

To everything there is a season….and for one of my nuns, making a whole class write out a chapter from the religion book because we were misbehaving, was the season for punishment. These days, whenever I hear the Byrds sing ‘Turn Turn Turn” on the radio, I remember that day. The chapter we had to write out included the verses from Ecclesiastes 3, about the seasons of life.

In terms of punishment and discipline, both were in abundant supply. And it could range from a simple comment to a physical assault.

My second-grade nun, when she thought we were getting too full of ourselves, would say something like, “Who do you think you are, Lady Jane?!” I always wondered who “Lady Jane” was, or what she did. I expect it wasn’t good, but I knew better than to ask.

Art class

One of my least favorite punishments was for them to take away our Friday-afternoon art time. It was always such a sad, frustrating, and depressing Friday when, yet again, you heard, “Okay, since you can’t behave, no art class today.”

It was as if art was seen as a reward or play, a tool to control behavior, instead of a vital component for balance, and mental and emotional well-being. It got treated like a bastard stepchild in the hierarchical strata of learning priorities. It lowered the subject of art to a status below things like math or geography, when for the student with an art gift, it could be EVERYTHING. It took away their one afternoon a week to get instruction in the one area of life that maybe was their genius and a moment to shine. And the Sisters didn’t seem to get that, for some of us, art was survival, like breathing.

Even for students who weren’t as interested in art, it deprived them of the chance to have a well-rounded creative learning experience. Even those who love science need to learn how to use art to relax, and more importantly, to think outside the box to find creative solutions to science problems.

When I taught science at the museum, I tried to get across to all that Liberal Arts classes are as important as calculus. Maybe even more, because Liberal Arts classes teach you to think, reason, ask questions, and broaden your creativity. That one class could have more effectively helped all of us to positively express our emotions. Instead, we had to bottle them up or act out our frustrations. By using art to punish a few, they deprived all of us of an experience to learn a valuable subject, do something positive, and touch our souls.

However, at that time, there was no awareness of things like ADHD or neurodivergence. It was not known then that art was something that could be harnessed to calm overactive kids struggling to sit still all day, or as a way to express emotions and be creative. And I had no awareness of any of this. I only knew I was upset.

The thing about school and its rules, just like the Slovak culture, was that you had a sense of belonging. There was a place that embraced you and protected you.

And I will note that there were Sisters who were absolute joys, and who were doing just what they were meant to do. My aunt was one. And my eighth-grade nun was one of the kindest people I ever met, and fun. She decided that year we would hatch duck eggs, and the funniest thing was that when they hatched, they imprinted on her as their mother. Those ducklings followed her everywhere, and loved her, and frankly, so did I.

There were also rough ones. I had one of those I will speak of later, whom I refer to as Sister Rampage. And I had one who was a mix of the two. She wasn’t always the nicest to me, but she also saw “a problem,” and for the time, did what she could to help me.

That said, even as its sense of order felt safe, school also taught us right from the start, you weren’t going to be coddled….

There were RULES

So, as I learned quickly in first grade, rule #1 -Don’t cross the lunch ladies. If you do, you’re on your own.

And there were many other ones:

Photo by author

I think if anything captures the soul of that first grader, these drawings do. Innocence revealed in the art…though I don’t think I’d ever want to meet that rabbit!

But this was the year my world expanded to include the domains of Sacred Heart Catholic School and the Sacred Heart Church. It was the beginning of a whole new adventure — school. And even though I would struggle, school was a relief and a reprieve from home.

The walk to school

It felt glorious! As I set out that first morning, I later learned that my grandfather was watching me from his second-floor front porch, crying. But I was unaware of that because I was off on a new adventure — all “six-year-old grown-up” me, leaving my little world and walking to school all by myself.

That bridge…

The first test of my spirit was the metal replacement bridge over the nearby Naugatuck River. It had been installed 5 years earlier, after the “1955 Flood” washed the other one away. Hurricane Diane had come through that August and set the Naugatuck River on a destructive rampage through towns up and down its entire valley across the state. With lives lost, and buildings, bridges, and roads ripped apart, that story was a powerful piece of local lore that everyone still spoke about.

The bridge was scary in several ways. For one, the rats lived somewhere along the riverbank under it. Also, the Naugatuck was a mess. People often threw trash in it, and we’d been told never to go near the river. Anytime I was on that bridge, I could see shopping carts, boxes, and pieces of broken things. And sometimes it was different colors because the woolen mill upstream would dump out its leftover dyes into the water. So, some days the Naugatuck was green, and on other days, it was purple, yellow, red, or orange.

As to the bridge itself, I was fascinated by it in a terrified way. The walkway was made of wooden slats with spaces between them. Since the bridge was meant to be a temporary structure until a better one could be built, it was not fancy.

As I walked across, I would stop and lean forward to peer between those slats. Far, far below me — at least it felt that way — the water rushed by. I was always afraid I would fall in. Yet, frozen between fascination and terror, I would remain there, hunched over for several minutes, until I couldn’t stand it any longer. Then I would bolt the rest of the way across the bridge to the corner crosswalk.

Auntie Kitty and “The Boat”

Many of the things I know about my grandfather, I learned indirectly, from his sister, my great-aunt, who lived in the third-floor apartment of our house. She was “Auntie Kitty.” I have no idea of the origin of her nickname, but that is what we always called her.

When I was a bit older, I would bring her the Sunday newspaper, and she would make breakfast. Over tea, I could get her to talk about the early days of her and my grandfather’s lives, and she would share what they had been through. While she talked freely and answered my questions, Grandpa NEVER spoke of his early years or any of the struggles he had.

They were born in Connecticut. But their father was always off somewhere, and finally their mother got fed up and took the kids back to Slovakia with her. Ironically, they lived in a place called “Toporec,” which was only about three miles away from where my grandmother grew up. Auntie’s mother had family in Toporec, so it made sense that they went back there, I guess.

However, they weren’t there for too long when their mother died. I don’t know how the decision was made to ship her and my grandfather back to the U.S., but they were put on “the boat” and sent back. When they arrived at Ellis Island, they sent my aunt on to other family members, but sent my grandfather back to Slovakia, alone. Some question about a health issue. They should not have done that because both my grandfather and Auntie Kitty were U.S. citizens. Also, they were children traveling alone.

Before proceeding to the next phase of life, I need to record a momentary aside, an “experimental observation” of sorts.

In the first section of this book, I described this writing journey as a sort of “scientific experiment approach.” First, I would review the past, make observations, and note any insights that came up along the way. Then, in the last two sections of the book, I would explore for meaning, draw some conclusions, and add my thoughts for the future.

As part of that first section, “starting point,” I made a couple of “Baseline” data point observations, one of them about a nightmare.

I am going to discuss the topic of nightmares in more detail in the analysis section of the book, Journey to the Underworld. There, as I share my path through some intense therapy after my mother’s death, I will also share the insights it provided. For now, suffice it to say that during that therapy, I had a lot of nightmares. Frequent and intense. They started with reliving the abuse, but over time…and healing, evolved from despair, to trapped rage, to self-empowerment.

It goes without saying that if all the intense digging into my emotions stirred up those nightmares, then the process of reliving my past as I write this book might certainly do the same. And it has.

Maria. Mary. Mary Gaura Tomala. “Grandma.” A loving, tolerant woman who welcomed us into her home without us even having to knock on the door. It was ALWAYS, “Just come in.” She was a simple woman, born here but mostly raised with relatives in Slovakia, until she returned when she was in her early 20s. I don’t know why she came back, but she did. To spend time with Grandma was to be enveloped in love, joy, and peace.

She had a hard life. Apparently, she had a difficult time with depression, possibly a breakdown, in the late 1930s. By then, she had delivered 4 children in 5 years, including during the Great Depression. My mother was her youngest. My aunt, the nun — Sister Luke — was her oldest daughter. Two sons were in between. The older son had the TV business, and the younger son was my uncle, the missionary priest in Puerto Rico, who came home for a month every summer.

But those early years had to be stressful for her. Then add in my grandfather’s work hours being cut, little money, and years of Sunday afternoon fights when my grandfather would come home drunk from the club, and I am amazed she was as happy as she was when I knew her in my childhood.

Her early life was equally turbulent and traumatic. When she was a child, her mother abandoned the family to run off with another man. Left with a daughter and son to care for, Grandma’s father took them back to Slovakia to live with relatives. It was a place called Nizne Ruzbachy – and my apologies to the people there that I cannot add the accents above the Z’s and the E. It’s interesting to look at pictures of that area on Google Maps. It is a hilly, rural area with farms, very similar in climate and geography to where we lived in Connecticut.

Years later, her mother tried to reconnect, but my grandmother absolutely refused. Grandma never forgave her. I wonder sometimes if Grandma’s deep hurt over that didn’t affect her overall sense of who she was and her own value. That whole sense of, “if my own mother left, who else would be there for me?” It would certainly make sese that Grandma might have felt much pain and shame over that abandonment. Then, add in having a husband who was an alcoholic and it would make her pull into herself.

In thinking about my grandmother as a person, not just as “Grandma,” I can’t recall her ever having any close friends, with one exception.

In spite of the very insular and controlled nature of our home, there was a wider circle of people in my life that offered some level of, if not support, at least distraction and moments of respite.

For one, there was our extended family in the form of grandparents and cousins, as well as school, church, and some family friends. I’ll speak about school, church, and friends in a bit.

In terms of family, I mentioned having grandparents who lived in Bridgeport and later in Stratford. Those were my father’s parents, and that whole family is a good example of the effects of intergenerational trauma. In a sentence, so much pain and dysfunction.

In fact, being there actually made our house seem normal by comparison. Years later, when I was in my last year of college, I lived with those grandparents for 12 months. I was doing my hospital internship for my medical laboratory degree, and the only way I could afford to do that so I could finish college was to live with them. I was there Sunday nights through Fridays for most of that time. You would think it would be a welcome break to be away from Dad this way. And in terms of being able to avoid him, it was. But these were the people who created my father, and frankly, by the end of the week, I was actually ready to go home. One time, I even drove home in a snowstorm just to get out of there.

There were some Saturdays when I was lucky enough to be home and Dad was busy elsewhere. This was especially true for a period in childhood when he would help one of my uncles with his TV business. Dad would be out for the afternoon, so peace would descend on our house.

Once my cleaning chores were done, I would try to tune the TV antenna just right to see if I could get reception for the New York City TV channels. These were the channels we watched in Bridgeport at my grandparents’ house, and I was determined to watch them at home, even if “just barely.”