Soul Mosaic

Up to this point, I have shared all the various influences that shaped who I was. From my own personality, my town, its culture, my parents, and our apartment, to the wider circle of grandparents, cousins, friends, school, and church, each was a thread of my world. Very soon, many aspects would be gone.

But before I move on to those next phases, I want to touch on one last “wider circle” influence in my life – family friends.

While the inner workings of our household were kept secret, my father did present that affable, easy-going, family man to the world. He was an usher at church and belonged to the Holy Name Society, a men’s group there. And my parents would go out to dinner occasionally, with a few of the couples who went to our church and whose kids were our friends.

In fact, occasionally on a Sunday after church, a group of us might head out for brunch. Sometimes it was to Hartford to the International House of Pancakes. Another time, it was an outing to Waterbury to have lunch at the new McDonald’s restaurant there. We didn’t have one in our town yet.

Expanding the circle

Somewhere during that time period, my parents and one of those couples decided to jointly buy 40 acres of land on a rural hilltop on the west side of Torrington. That was the land we all referred to as “The Lot,” a name even our dog knew and would get excited to hear because she loved to go there.

Putting aside the solitary trips there with my dad when he abused me, the place itself was beautiful woodland. The other couple would build their home there within a couple of years. For my father, it would take seven years before he had enough money to do that. But we would eventually be neighbors there with our houses right next to each other. Even though we were worlds apart

That land deal, though, was one of the better things to happen because it expanded our insular family just a bit. We went to school with, and were friends with their kids, and even our dogs were friends. I loved visiting with their mom and spent more than a few hours talking with her. I will refer to her from here on simply as “my neighbor.”

Cape Cod

About the same time that all of the breakfasts and the property purchase were going on, our family also did something we’d NEVER done before…or would ever again. We went on a weeklong vacation to Cape Cod with my neighbor and her family.

We went to a place called Dennisport, in an area on Cape Cod that faces south onto the Atlantic side of the Cape. Each family rented a house, and their grandmother even joined them. We’d spend time at the beach, time at the cottages playing games, going out for ice cream sodas at A&W Root Beer, and spending hours playing miniature golf. It was such a gift of a trip, not being restricted to just our family unit and subject to the vagaries of Dad’s moods.

Mary…The Blessed Virgin….The BVM…The Lady in Blue…The Mother of God…The Black Madonna…Compassion Goddess…Great Earth Mother….Tara….Kwan Yin…

Regardless of the name, the embodiment of mothering, compassion, and love in some feminine form has shown up in all cultures and time periods. I will talk more later about my own journey to make my peace with a “spiritual mother” in my life. It was something I rejected for a good part of my adulthood, but I have since welcomed back, this time with a much broader understanding of things.

During my childhood, it was Mary, Mother of God, or the Blessed Virgin Mary. And as much as I loved God and prayed to Him, it was his mother that I really felt close to. He was scary. She was welcoming. Approachable. Kind. And never more so than on those Saturday afternoons after confession….

Once the ordeal of confession was over and I’d said the prayers for my penance, I’d wander around the church. Emotionally spent, but grateful to be in a total state of grace again, I wanted to remain in the peace of that church for as long as possible. I would have stayed there forever if I could have.

The first place I wandered, ALWAYS, was to the front of the church. My two favorite things were there — the votive candles and Mary’s statue. It was my favorite statue of the many in our church. She was tucked off to the right side of the front altar, kind of her own “grotto,” right next to the flickering votive candles.

He’s waiting

Every Saturday, He was there, waiting for me. The door would close behind me, wrapping me in the silence and darkness. And He would be there, waiting, watching, silent.

Guilty and scared, I would glance up at the life-sized crucifix in the vestibule, then look down. I couldn’t tell if I was being viewed with compassion, like He understood my “predicament,” or disappointment, because yet again, I failed Him.

Why couldn’t I have a dad who didn’t do these things? Why couldn’t I have a body that didn’t even have these kinds of feelings? It could be so easy to go to heaven if you could just focus on other things in life and never on “that.”

I looked over at the bookstand and wanted to see if there was anything new. But right now, I was too upset. After.

The agony of the choice

Before I’d even gotten here, I’d gone through the agony of the first decision: Do I even go to Confession today? And, if so, which church do I go to?”

Whispering the disaster to come

The first time I walked into a therapist’s office, I was actually shaking. Terrified, consumed with shame, and coming apart at the seams, I could barely speak. In fact, when I told the therapist why I was there, I could only WHISPER the words because I was so afraid. For 28 years, I’d been brainwashed, guilted, and bullied into loyal silence by my father. And I understood that just by walking into that office, I was breaking EVERY ONE of those rules drilled into me for a lifetime. I expected unimaginable horrors to descend on me, though I couldn’t tell you what they would be. I was just convinced that this was going to result in something terrible. AND I would be inflicting hurt on my family, because of my “transgression in speaking.”

But I was hanging on by a thread, and was actually scared about how unglued I felt. I was caught between two “no-win” situations. I was damned and betraying my family if I spoke. And I was going down the tubes if I remained silent. I’d never felt this low or hopeless before. And God was of no use to me anymore.

For all those years, I’d believed in and prayed to God for help. Yet in the end, it seemed that I’d asked but not received. I’d had to get myself out of that house, alone. And that was the story of my life, past, present, and future – I was alone. So it was on me to save myself. God was out of the picture. And if my only choice left was to mentally “jump out of the plane,” so be it. Life would either provide a parachute or it would finish me.

Disclaimer

Aside from school and my quiet morning Masses, my religion had other ways that it was a very strong influence over who I was and how I dealt with what was happening. I can’t speak for how things operate in the Catholic Church today. I have long since left. So what I share here about Catholicism is from what I grew up with and how it affected me, personally, for better or worse. Thus, I speak only about my own experiences, and no disrespect to anyone else’s.

What is Normal?

To a child, whatever they are living in is “normal.” A child has no other experience or way to assess that what they are living in is beyond the pale, or “abusive.” They only know what is reflected back at them from those around them.

For me, that was from the rules of my culture, my religion, my household, the ethics and examples of the adults around me….all the things I have been sharing. And that would have been IN ADDITION TO the constant repetition of brainwashing messages I got at home from Dad. So if all of those influences reflect back to me that this is just normal life, that is what I accepted.

The only other reference point a child has is their own sense, intuitively, of what feels right or wrong, good or bad to them. Their own compass that just comes from within. My own nature was gentle, even as it was competitive. I loved deeply. I was loyal and had a strong code of honor. And I was very sensitive to not hurting anyone’s feelings, especially the people close to me.

I also seemed to have an ingrained sense of morality, and an intense awareness of church teachings and of what was sinful…which meant what was hurting God.

So it was a source of conflict to me to hear Dad’s messages that what we were doing was okay, versus feeling in my gut that it wasn’t right. Then add in what I learned in religion class and in church. And to me, it seemed like what we were doing was a sin, and so I must be hurting God. These were no small conflicts for a child to feel, much less resolve. And it would only get worse with time.

What were those church teachings and influences? I split them into two categories, the first of which I’ll talk about in this essay – the stories that taught a way to live. The second, the rules and rituals the Church laid out, I’ll speak of in the next essay.

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.