Building a Man

Building a Man

Ravenspeaker

Copyright © 2023 Ravenspeaker

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 978-1-6624-5258-1 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-5259-8 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

For my munchkins, Briar and Jade. May my stories prove useful in your own journeys to find yourselves, and may they also help you know your dad a little better.

An Apparently Random Thought

I am Robert Douglas Frederiksen, your friendly neighborhood Ravenspeaker—a traditional storyteller of the Tsimshian Nation and Raven Clan.

I deal in mythology and have forged a pretty interesting career doing so. In these pages, I have a true story to share or, more correctly, several woven together.

There are deep truths in each of them, and they are not the pointless ramblings of an old man remembering his younger days. I hope to make the message more obvious than it was for me by doing this. There are some steamy piles of crap on the road I chose in life. Those smelly reminders of messes made proved to be some pretty good lessons. Even if stinky, I eventually became a responsible adult. I then discovered a greater truth as I washed off the stench of my idiot's path.

Rolling around in all these smelly piles of crap as I did, I learned a few things. One of these is people tend to hate the truth. They stop listening if their favorite ideas are challenged by it. Since I don't want to defeat my own purposes by upsetting people, let me say a few things to begin.

It is a very difficult job for a teen mom to raise a child alone. Anyone in this position should be supported and not condemned. At the same time, if we are loving people, we must agree to teach boys and girls to avoid becoming parents before they are in stable relationships well past the hots for each other stage.

Many of the stories you are about to experience likely would not have happened if a boy and a girl, back in the day, were in a stable relationship built on more than just butterflies in the stomach and feelings of excitement and romance.

I suspect there are still people who will feel challenged by the themes expressed in these stories. I am not trying to offend anyone, but good intentions have never stopped some people from getting hot and bothered anyway. I hope that, instead, you will meet the challenges in this book in a thoughtful and life-bettering way. The real test is getting that final message I took way too long to figure out. That one will change your life.

Chapter 1

A Great Truth Hidden and Unknown

Chapter 2

I Find a Way to Live

Chapter 3

Winds of Change Come

Chapter 4

How to Get to Neptune

Chapter 5

The Importance of Being Isabel

Chapter 6

Sorry Might Be Better

Chapter 7

An Enemy Finds His Place in the Story

Chapter 8

How to Predict There Will Be Beauty

Chapter 9

What Great Expectations Bring

Chapter 10

Don't Call Me Dexter

Chapter 11

How a Goddess Is Entertained

Chapter 12

A Sudden Decision Has Its Consequences

Chapter 13

A Change of Scenery and Character

Chapter 14

The Magic Power of Nudity

Chapter 15

The Greatest Gift Ever

Chapter 16

The Asian Invasion Triumphs and I Try to

Chapter 17

A Perfect Face and a Hint of Better Things

Chapter 18

I Stumble into a Whole New World

Chapter 19

A Robin Is in the Wind

Chapter 20

A Pretty Girl, a Pretty Car, and Some Pretty Pictures on a Table

Chapter 21

Bait and Switch

Chapter 22

How to Disappear without Really Meaning To

Chapter 23

Why Are NDN Women So Difficult?

Chapter 24

What I Did at the Crossroads

Chapter 25

Morris the Wise and Powerful

Chapter 26

Becoming Morris Day My Way

Chapter 27

Something like Success

Chapter 28

The Good, the Bad, and the Perfect Blend of Both

Chapter 29

A Great Truth Finally Understood

About the Author

Ravenspeaker is the stage name for Robert Douglas Frederiksen, a traditional Alaskan Tsimshian storyteller of the Raven Clan. His focus could best be described as exploring the connection between story and philosophy on the one hand and the creation and reflection of culture through storytelling on the other. He believes when a society no longer treasures its old stories and produces new ones with little or no impact, it is in trouble. He also believes we live in such a society.

Ravenspeaker has two children and two grandchildren who provide plenty of inspiration for his series of novellas and short stories called The Mousy Mouse Chronicles.

For my munchkins, Briar and Jade. May my stories prove useful in your own journeys to find yourselves, and may they also help you know your dad a little better.

An Apparently Random Thought

I am Robert Douglas Frederiksen, your friendly neighborhood Ravenspeaker—a traditional storyteller of the Tsimshian Nation and Raven Clan.

I deal in mythology and have forged a pretty interesting career doing so. In these pages, I have a true story to share or, more correctly, several woven together.

There are deep truths in each of them, and they are not the pointless ramblings of an old man remembering his younger days. I hope to make the message more obvious than it was for me by doing this. There are some steamy piles of crap on the road I chose in life. Those smelly reminders of messes made proved to be some pretty good lessons. Even if stinky, I eventually became a responsible adult. I then discovered a greater truth as I washed off the stench of my idiot's path.

Rolling around in all these smelly piles of crap as I did, I learned a few things. One of these is people tend to hate the truth. They stop listening if their favorite ideas are challenged by it. Since I don't want to defeat my own purposes by upsetting people, let me say a few things to begin.

It is a very difficult job for a teen mom to raise a child alone. Anyone in this position should be supported and not condemned. At the same time, if we are loving people, we must agree to teach boys and girls to avoid becoming parents before they are in stable relationships well past the hots for each other stage.

Many of the stories you are about to experience likely would not have happened if a boy and a girl, back in the day, were in a stable relationship built on more than just butterflies in the stomach and feelings of excitement and romance.

I suspect there are still people who will feel challenged by the themes expressed in these stories. I am not trying to offend anyone, but good intentions have never stopped some people from getting hot and bothered anyway. I hope that, instead, you will meet the challenges in this book in a thoughtful and life-bettering way. The real test is getting that final message I took way too long to figure out. That one will change your life.

Chapter 1

A Great Truth Hidden and Unknown

I don't know why I can remember all the way back to my time in diapers. I don't know why almost no one else I know can. I only know I can.

I never knew if this ability did me any favors until I decided to determine if there were some useful lessons to be drawn from my life. I was shocked to discover even in my earliest memories hid a great truth, hidden and unknown, following teasingly along as I learned to walk. Had I understood this secret soaked into every moment of my diaper filled days I probably would have lived the life of Mozart, Michael Jackson, or Tiger Woods who all continued their youthful productive genius well into adulthood.

Yes, I am saying I had that potential. No, I am not saying anyone would have given a healthy dose of some magic formula. Whether I have an inflated opinion of myself will be up to whatever audience I can interest in these stories to determine, but every word I write here happened to the best of my memory in the way I remember it.

Memories are fuzzy from before I could walk, but they are there. For instance, I was in someone's basement with a set of graying wood stairs, climbing up to a tidy home above. We were stationed under them in the middle of the space, concrete and long-neglected this-and-thats surrounding us on all sides. I was sitting on my mother's lap expectantly and dressed with an unusual amount of care. Mom had on a fancy reddish-purple overcoat with a velvety fur-like feel she rarely ever wore.

A man was pointing different lights at us and adjusting their glare. Behind us was a backdrop unrolled like wax paper with colored tissues glued to it with starch or something. He finally aimed what would prove to be a camera in our direction. For some reason, I laughed happily at just the right moment.

This is probably my earliest memory. I didn't have many teeth and definitely had no hair.

The difference between me at that time and any of the geniuses I mentioned above was they all had one thing I didn't. The similarities between me and some of history's worst human beings were they all had a few things I did.

No doubt there will be people who say I ended up badly anyway, and they aren't completely wrong. I certainly have some terrible sins to answer for. Still, I will let my storytelling make the case whether it was good I was allowed to live or I should have been taken out back and shot at an early age.

*****

My mother was a newly minted seventeen-year-old living on her own when she gave birth to me. Like my wise and revered grandmother before her, she had left home at sixteen, certain she could make a life for herself better than her parents ever could. Unlike my grandmother's day, 1967 was a time when young people were encouraged to rebel against the tried and true.

Instead of making her dreams come true by knowing better, my mom got me.

About my father, I only know a few things so won't say much here. The name I was given may not even be who my dad was. Regardless, he left before he could make any real impression on me.

This, of course, is another difference between my mother and grandmother. Gramma married my grandfather when she left home. My mother didn't marry anyone for many years after my birth.

When I was two, we lived in the rather depressing southeast Seattle neighborhood of Holly Park. I had a dog named Freckles, who was some kind of short and squat pooch. I interacted with that dog a great deal and loved him. I wish I could remember what happened to him.

I would often imagine myself "Up, up and away" whenever the lyrics of the 5th dimension's popular song about a beautiful balloon came on our little white radio.

My favorite TV show was Eddie's Father, which the adults, for whatever reason, gave a longer completely gibberish title. I liked the way Eddie's dad would listen to him at the end of every episode and playfully but attentively reply. I definitely wanted my dad to show up and listen to what I had to say after seeing how pleasant that could be. Unfortunately, he never did, but Bill Bixby would become the ideal image of a father to me for years to come.

Instead of a dad in my toddlerhood, I became acquainted with the crazy lady next door. She frequently lured me into her home, made funny faces at me, and spoke in wildly different voices. I thought she was fascinating because she was so strange. Sometimes, I was even a little afraid of her without knowing why, but I kept going back. I enjoyed her exhaustive efforts to host my little self and did not feel like the occasional creeps I got from her provided an excuse to refuse her constant invitations. So I didn't understand why my mother, nineteen at the time, kept warning me not to go over there.

On a particular sunny day, I was playing all alone on a square patch of cement in front of our house. Holly Park consisted of hundreds of identical, blandly painted, and cheaply constructed two-story duplexes in a campus like arrangement.

Our front yard was a wide common space shared by maybe six of these projects as they were called. The identical buildings on either side of ours were positioned very close to one another, allowing only five- or ten-feet space in between.

Crazy Lady Next Door saw me and smiled happily. She had come out onto her own humble porch for some fresh air and saw me in my overalls and diaper. She started waving playfully at me. She even had one hand on the wooden railing of her porch so she could lean out and greet me more enthusiastically.

Hi, Robbie, come inside! She beckoned as she had before on several occasions.

I knew my mother told me not to. I looked at Crazy Lady and wondered why. All I knew at that moment is my mother wasn't around, and it seemed a little rude not to follow her inside when she was inviting me in such a smiling and friendly way.

I liked the house I wasn't supposed to go into because of a little Japanese doll in a wood and glass case that fascinated me so much. It seemed alive when it looked back at me with a knowing smile. I got my eyeful of the geisha wearing a golden kimono and was distracted by a request for my attention.

See this? Crazy Lady Next Door asked. She was wearing a peach-covered cloth folded over into a triangle as a head covering like my gramma might wear. What startled me is the face of my hostess changed. She became like an old lady herself when a moment before she was only a young woman.

This is what you are supposed to wear when it is raining outside, the strange image before me said. It was a hot sunny day, but the old woman my eyes could somehow see over the youthful image of Crazy Lady Next Door seemed ready to take me with her out in whatever rain she perceived to be happening.

I was thinking about crying when suddenly she took off the head scarf and became a happy young woman again. She showed me some kind of terrible blade. I don't remember if it was a knife or a pair of scissors, but it got my attention. I knew it should not be touched or touch me. Even then I understood scissors could slice my soft skin or gouge out my little eyes. A knife could stab or even cut off parts of my tender little body. I didn't know what her intentions were or if the sharp thing she wanted me to inspect was going to be used for my discomfort. I did know I would do better to follow any instructions she gave me.

That was when she had me take all my clothes off except for my diaper. She filled the sink with water and started washing all of them by hand. While they were soaking, she turned on the old-fashioned stove beside the sink and, one by one, started putting my dripping wet clothes into it.

She looked over in the corner to an empty spot beside an old piece of wooden furniture like a shelf. She seemed to hear someone say something next to that cabinet or whatever it was and nodded.

We are going to make it all better, she said in response to whatever she heard and nodded to herself.

By that time, I had become acquainted with the idea of the Boogie Dude and wondered if my strange friend might have been in communication with him. There was also the possibility of ghosts, and while I wasn't sure which one was speaking to her, I did know I had no preference or desire for either.

She carried on her one-sided conversation with whatever spooky individual was completely invisible to me. I was distracted when a wave of heat struck my naked body, and I could see the cast iron door of the warming oven was yet open. My clothes were still arranged neatly on the grill. My little socks looked like they might even be dry. I wondered if I would soon be placed inside the stove with them, and I shuddered.

Meanwhile, Crazy Lady Next Door had my overalls on a massive ironing board, worrying frantically at the perceived wrinkles of that one piece of clothing while the rest were starting to crisp in the stove.

Memory is a strange thing. For years I tended to recall those moments with Crazy Lady Next Door as harmless, and that my mother's warnings were for nothing. She was a nice crazy lady after all, and she even tried to wash and dry my clothes for me. For the longest time, the very next thing I remembered was walking outside into the sunshine on my own. I was wearing my overalls and nothing else and felt like everything was fine. I never recalled the fear and the dread nor her mysterious invisible visitor until I had been made to go over the whole thing a few times to try and understand why those light fluffy memories I was able to contact sometimes gave me the creeps.

I was only reminded many years later that it was my aunt Arline who shooed me out the door to be discovered and swooped up by my very pretty cousin, Corrine. Auntie broke into that house while my hostess was distracted with my uncooperative pants and the rest of my now-smoldering clothes blackening in the oven.

Cousin Corrine and her brother Dougie had been calling for me when I first spotted them; a host of relatives standing around. I got their attention, and they were very happy to see me.

Today I have a strong belief my life was spared that day before it had even begun.

I never saw Crazy Lady again; but for years, I would look, in creeped-out fascination, at a little geisha doll wrapped in a black silk robe and housed in a vaguely familiar glass-and-wood box my grandmother had. I didn't like how the beautiful little piece of Japanese art held her banjo-like instrument. I didn't like how she looked back at me as if she could see and was very aware of me. I also didn't like how she smiled at me as if she knew me from somewhere else.

Once in a while, I would be reminded that Crazy Lady Next Door had one just like it. For some reason, I would frequently forget that and be reminded again and again for years. The great mystery hidden and unknown might have been found out had I not forgotten where I had seen her before. Nevertheless, there were other opportunities in my toddler days to trigger the most important lesson I would ever learn.

*****

I was sick in bed with chicken pox a little while later. My mother left me to attend to whatever errand had her leaving her two-year-old feverish child home alone.

My eye was nearly sealed shut by a pock or a dried eye booger poking out of my lash. I focused all my strength on just the motive power of my eyelid and was very pleased when it ripped open and I could see the corner of my room.

I remember lying in my bed staring at the ceiling and having the distinct feeling of being actually located where my eyes were pointing and not inside the body containing those eyes. It would not be the last time something like that happened to me. In fact, when I saw my cousins as I came out of Crazy Lady's house previously, I distinctly recall it as if I were walking beside myself.

As I marveled at how I could be on the ceiling and lying in bed at the same time, I found myself alerted to the sound of someone crawling in my bedroom window. This was astonishing because the bedrooms of our Holly Park duplex were on the second floor.

I looked over to see the face of a young woman I knew to be a friend of my mother's. I long since forgot her name and, today, have only a vague sense she was a part of a big family. I also have the frustrating idea there is someone in that family I should very much remember but can't. I say this fully aware that most people would never remember being two years old in any condition or having anyone they shouldn't forget but have.

She fell into my room; and when she righted herself, she smiled, her long hair blond and her eyes blue. She was definitely a hippie.

How are you doing, Robbie? she asked, and I told her I was good, though even then I didn't like being called Rob or Robbie. I had forgotten about being on the ceiling by then and was now just a kid lying in bed, having some chicken pox.

I heard you were sick.

Yes, I said, fascinated with the spectacle of someone crawling into my room and wondering how she managed it from a lawn a good dozen or more feet below. I got this across to her somehow, my verbal powers being only that of a bright two-year-old.

I just climbed up the side, she said. Most likely she had a ladder, but she convinced me she had climbed the walls entirely by hand like Spider-Man did on his cartoon.

She visited me for a time and then went back out the window, leaving me to wonder if she had to go catch some bank robbers. It was reasonable to my inexperienced mind that if she could do what Spider-Man could, she would probably employ herself as Spider-Man did. Before she left to save the day, she gave me a book made entirely of red cloth and painted with pictures and words I of course could not read.

When my mother got home, I showed her the rag book and explained from whom and how it was acquired.

Once I decided my window hopping friend was not a superhero, it bothered me for a long time that I couldn't figure out how she climbed up to the second floor or why I believed she didn't have a ladder. I laugh at myself now for realizing how she did it was not the important question behind years of obsession on the matter. My chances of being Tiger Woods were slipping away.

*****

The other time I felt like I was out of my body occurred about the same time. I was at the top of the wooden stairs of our home and decided I wanted to be at the bottom. I began to descend by holding onto the banister on one side and plopping one foot at a time onto the next step before repeating the operation several more times. There was a kind of barrier made of vertical slats of wood one after the other, where the stairs went below the second floor and would otherwise have faced open air.

I am not sure what happened, but this is not a procedure I have ever felt comfortable watching a toddler do since that day. I started tumbling down the steps smashing my head very painfully more than once while my little legs kept flipping over my body and propelling me to stair after stair. Only the fence-like barrier prevented me from flying into the living room across empty space.

I screamed bloody murder, and my mother must have been nearby. She collected me and plopped over on the couch slammed up tight against the stairs and started comforting me.

Oh, you poor baby! Did you get scared? she asked as she hugged me. For years, I tried to explain to myself how I was six feet away, watching my very young mother holding me and trying to get me to stop crying. It was such an odd sensation. I was more impressed with this unusual experience than either the mother or the wailing baby I was looking at.

She changed my diaper when I calmed down and poked me with the safety pin people of a certain age know nothing about and everyone older is well aware of.

Ow! I said.

Sorry, she responded, and I was definitely no longer six feet away. I was also no longer in any danger of becoming Mozart, Michael Jackson, or Tiger Woods. Hopefully, the journey these pages take will make the reason why clear enough.

*****

There is a scene I recall maybe a few months after this but in a different place. It always felt like the calm before the storm to me. It is the last memory I have of being a carefree and well-situated child.

I was ambling around the yard of my grandmother's home one day in the Admiral District of West Seattle. I was completely bottomless in my striped shirt with a bottle in hand, running around a rockery I frequently preferred. It made me think of the beach at the bottom of that big hill for some reason.

My uncle Alan, a rough-and-tumble machinist who always reminded me of Johnny Cash, had nicknamed me Wobbly Bobbly. He had a booming voice and a surprising creative and comedic side, which I think only came out when he was relaxed. He was very relaxed in this scene, as was everyone else present.

There goes Wobbly Bobbly poopie showing again! Alan declared for the greater benefit of the very proper and upstanding neighborhood all around us. I laughed at the nickname and the humorous recognition of the nudity I was allowed to display somehow forbidden to everyone else.

My mother was present, and she also laughed, displaying a lighthearted character she rarely would later.

From that day, and for a while after, Wobbly Bobbly was what everyone called me. My forming mind considered it was due to my chunkiness and my inability to walk properly. Yet I lost it by the time I was four and was long and thin instead of short and squat.

I was a very happy, adventurous little guy for the first two or three years of my already-eventful life. That I was no longer on a path to be emperor of the earth by the age of twelve no longer mattered. What did matter as I soon discovered was I no longer was even on a path to be the ruler of my own spirit.

*****

I must have been four years old on the fateful day it became clear to me my life was no longer livable. We had joined the diversely populated Rainier Valley neighborhood across the street from Whitworth Elementary. Rich and poor often lived next door to one another in that area and still do. Maybe 10 or 20 percent of the houses nearby were empty. I didn't know this was during the Great Boeing Bust that depopulated Seattle for almost ten years. I did know there had to be ghosts and other unwholesome boogie people living in those empty houses. I was very careful to avoid them.

While we were still settling into the new residence, my mother had demonstrated a new and terrible method of preventing me from ever crossing her. She had been mean to me a handful of times before, and I was very aware she could be. Before this day, however, there was nothing I would have considered a habit.

She wanted me to stay outside and play with the daughter of her best friend, Mary Anderson, and to not come inside until instructed to do so under any circumstances.

It was a cool, somewhat foggy morning, and no other children were out of their homes yet. There are only so many things a four-year-old can do to occupy himself without a box full of toys, cartoons displaying on a nearby television, or ready access to a bathroom. I don't recall exactly what I was doing, but I do recall I had been outside doing it for what seemed like hours. I desperately wanted to go in.

My companion, little Julie, was maybe two or three at the time and answered every question posed to her with a yes whether she meant it or not or whether it was the appropriate answer or not. Julie and I had separated for a few moments. When she found me, her wide green eyes and somewhat frantic gestures seemed very interested to communicate something her nonsensical baby babble could not completely make clear. So I asked her if it was time to go inside to cut to the chase.

Yes, she said as she always did with any question, and not being very clever or aware yet of people's quirks, I entered the house on this false testimony unbidden by my impatient mother. She reacted in a way soon to be predictable for its unpredictability.

What are you doing in here! She demanded to know as she was busy with whatever mysterious thing she didn't want me in the way of. I told you to stay outside!

I looked over at Mary, wondering if the red-headed woman would say anything to help me out. She just looked at me without sympathy and turned her attention to the far wall.

I attempted to explain my unwanted presence in the face of my mother's smoldering accusative eyes.

Julie said it was time to come in was the only ineffective and pathetic response my cornered four-year-old mind could think up. The toddler, who triggered this scene a moment before, was of course nowhere to be seen. Any sensible little person would have immediately scattered and hidden themselves in that situation.

My weak explanation was answered with a slap, then I was dragged by the scruff of my neck to the large deck-like back porch that was probably the main selling point of our new house. I didn't like being frog-marched back outside so ingloriously, but a moment later, I was to wish that was all that was done to me.

I was stripped of my pants and underwear. Then I was forcefully somersaulted and somehow held upside down by my ankles. I am not sure how she had the strength to even do that as she whipped me mercilessly with a switch she had just impressively torn from a living tree hanging helpfully at arm's reach. Each stroke ripped into my bare skin with such an impressive sting my whole body convulsed time and time again.

I screamed uncontrollably. The pain was unbelievable, but no one came to my rescue.

I remember shitting and pissing blood for a day or two after that. However, I carefully did not call attention to this alarming turn in the bathroom from the woman who caused it. I did get to be in the house when I was thrown into my room.

Someday I am going to have a son, and I will never do anything like that to him! I whimpered to myself and unsympathetic ears on the other side of the door. Whether or not, I kept that promise to the future Jade Douglas Dudoward Frederiksen as well as to his sister, Briar Rose Williams; will have to wait for later chapters to reveal. Instead, I decided I was very unwanted and couldn't shake that unwavering certainty for a very long time after.

What happened to me routinely from then on cannot be compared to a kid getting a swat or two because mama or daddy meant business. What happened to me can only correctly be described as torture. The pain was nearly impossible to endure. The frequency made it worse and the reasons my always bare behind was subject to these radical punishments put everything into a tidy bow.

I was tortured like this for crimes most parents would consider nothing worth getting off the couch for. I was tortured like this for crimes other children committed I played no part in at all, and I was tortured like this for crimes no one committed that my mother was too busy getting insanely angry about to ask if what upset her so much even took place.

We had our house warming party a few weeks later.

Are you afraid of your mother? my favorite auntie Arline, my rescuer from Crazy Lady Next Door, asked me out of nowhere, interrupting my play with the very rowdy bunch of children who were my various cousins.

The house was full of gossiping uncles and aunties and who knows how many rambunctious kids. For our Alaskan Tsimshian people, the word family is always of the extended variety and not just the nuclear mom-dad-and-kids model many others might mean. Arline, therefore, had asked this in front of everyone who mattered in my world.

All present stopped what they were doing to listen in; everyone's eyes were now on me and putting me in some sort of a bind. My mother also looked up with a subtle menace, interested to know what I would say.

And there was my sticky unwanted problem.

I have watched you crash headfirst into every adult in this room without a thought. But when your mother was about to cross your path, you froze instantly and backed out of the way. My aunt's gaze pressed me as she was probing for an answer. I was caught flat-footed and unable to say anything. I looked between her and my eagle-eyed, open-eared mother, realizing things would not go well for me if I said the wrong thing—not right now while everyone was looking but most definitely later.

Was I afraid of my mother?

I have no way of knowing how the unlucky life before me would have changed had I answered that question honestly. My Tsimshian people have been taking children from unfit family members since the dawn of time, and brutal violence certainly would have been considered a sign of unfitness. My own grandmother was raised by relatives this way, and she was paying close attention after my aunt asked her inconvenient question.

I was terrified of my mother.

No, I replied to my aunt's perfectly wrong-timed inquiry. I was hoping perhaps I wouldn't be believed and called out for being the liar I was. I came up with some half-hearted excuse for my previous fearful behavior, which unconsciously brought attention to my situation. I tried my best afterward to play it off and rejoin my loud and unconcerned cousins visiting mayhem throughout the house.

I understand my mother better today than I did then, but I can't excuse her. Had she paid a little visit to Planned Parenthood, perhaps she could have made something of herself, but then I wouldn't be here to report on that.

Chapter 2

I Find a Way to Live

Is there any way for a four-year-old boy to be regularly tortured, have little or no hope for relief as he suffers again and again, and not be affected by the time six months or a year has played out? I could look forward to nothing but more of the same. I should have gone completely insane before my first day of kindergarten. Yet I found it possible to balance this constant misery by withdrawing into my imagination and losing all interest in anything or anyone really. At the same time, I discovered the exact same benefit, incredibly, by doing the opposite. I was constantly withdrawing into my head and then exploding out of it to ambush some unsuspecting person for their praise and attention. Far into the future, I was to see the same thing in someone else and knew precisely what was going on when I did.

As a young man, I met a boy that reminded me a great deal of myself at the end of the last chapter. I had no idea who he was. I just stumbled across him while walking down a quiet residential sidewalk, my mind on a thousand other things.

Normally, I wouldn't have noticed him at all. He was maybe seven or eight, wore glasses, and had short blond hair. He was a skinny little kid too.

I could tell he was restless with no clue what to do with himself. It was a bright, sunny day, and a normal boy would have been expected to be about mischief or some kind of rough play. I could tell this young fellow never got much opportunity at such things. Instead, he paced around, noticing cars, mailboxes, and whatever else. A flash of an idea might come across his face here or there. And he would be momentarily interested in whatever he thought up, only to shake his head and, instantly downcast, would look around for something else to occupy his time.

Hi, he said when he saw me notice him.

Hello, I responded and found myself stopping.

Do you live around here? he asked, not really knowing what else to say but liking the idea of connecting with someone.

No, I am just passing through.

I am staying with my grandmother for a few days, he said like this wasn't a plan he knew anything about beforehand, was not prepared for it, and was not anything he could have predicted. It just sort of happened and might be a good thing, but it might not also.

Grandmothers are good, I suggested.

Yes, they are, he said with a nod like this only just occurred to him and gave him something new to think about. Before he could, a new idea grabbed his mind. Did you know a whale can hold his breath for thirty minutes?

You know, I think I have heard something along those lines, I responded thoughtfully. I could tell it made him happy that a useless fact was received by somebody who wasn't irritated to hear it. I had been in his exact position before. I knew what he was trying to do, so I gave him what he needed.

You sure seem like a smart kid, I said and knew I hit the nail on the head. His face beamed, and he started talking all manners of nonsense about rockets and insects and whatever else. I smiled indulgently and told him I had to go and that he should be good to his grandma. I had a feeling he would be there for a while. My new friend promised he would, and I saw him look around and spot a tree like he had a determination to wrestle it. I have no doubt he pinned it.

When I was four to five years old, not yet enrolled in school and really having no purpose in life but to play and figure out how to get along in the world, I was just like that boy. I needed to make a connection with someone because the one person I should have been connecting with paid little or no attention to me one moment and more than I ever wanted the next. For me, the alternative was to stay in my head all day just like any insane person will be found to do.

Of course, my mother had no time for anything like a useless fact and would tell me to shut up if I asked too many questions, which encouraged me to hide under the cozy covers of my inner thoughts. Believe it or not, it was not all bad. Nothing ever is all bad. My mother was capable of being pleasant and noticing whatever condition I was in at any given moment. Once in a while, she would even attend to me, giving me hope that I could peek out from the warm fuzzy blankets of my thought life and receive the desperately needed medicine of affection.

One of the best memories I have of that time was the day she taught me how to wash dishes. I stood next to her on a kitchen chair waiting expectantly as delightful, bubbly water began to form in our sink. Different plates, bowls, and silverware were disappearing under the froth, and it was all wonderful to watch for the first time. I was about five years old and excited to do something useful and learn a skill.

The dishes need to soak for a minute, so let them be in this basin while you fill it with hot water. She explained expertly as soapy water rose in the basin before me.

I don't like it hot! I suddenly cried out in alarm.

That may be, but it needs to be hot in order for the dishes to be clean. At that moment and a few others like it, I felt like I had a good mother and hoped for the next day.

When I had washed all the dishes to