Chapters

In a moment, my eyes were opened, my body was numb, my mind was blank, and everything made perfect sense AND yet no sense at all. Preparing for the birth of my first child was all things exhilarating and equally nerve-racking, a time in my life when all I knew was, I knew really nothing. I was an only child, rarely exposed to babies, but when I was, there was a love unexplainable, a longing to linger closer and hold tighter. In fact,I grew infatuated with babies, real babies. I wanted to share life with another human like myself, not older than me but younger. As I mentioned, I didn’t want to playhouse as a young girl, I wanted to create “house,” a family, a mom,lots of kids and lots of love. A longing that came from deep, deep within, similar to how deep I felt that first kick in my womb during pregnancy. A familiar closeness of soul and spirit that connects your life to theirs. Once that happens you can’t stop imagining what they look like, what life is being created inside and what life will look like on the outside when he/she breaksthe surface. And then the bigger questions like what kind of mom will I be, what will life look like, can I do it, what if...? Yet, the delivery date is never close enough. Anticipation. Excitement. A Dream come true... This is where I was in my dreamy state of mind. Until it wasn’t.

Under the monumental overarching sycamore trees, I found myself leaning in to hear my mother’s story; but it was more than listening, it was hearing to feel her heart. The thing about storms is they always pass and what’s left with us is the story. This was parts of her story. Much like the roots of these multi-hundred-year-old trees we were sitting under, I could feel these stories had deep roots that weathered many tumultuous storms. Roots that sustain life through storms; survive. It was a serene and tender moment that I can instantly feel even now, like the smell of a desert rain on a hot day. I can smell my way back to that chair under the sycamore tree, both hanging on to every next word and holding her tender heart she so vulnerably shared. Every moment of it enveloped us. Here, we finally were as a mother and daughter, connecting our roots. This was, and will always be, a sacred moment, a turning point in our relationship and in my identity too. My mom trusted me with her story and somehow it made me feel grown up.

“Jim, I must go now, my grandma just died, she came to me and said goodbye,I saw her, it’s real, I must leave now.” “No, Lori, go back to bed, it’s only a nightmare, go back to sleep. No, I’m leaving now.” My mother arrived at the house only to find her malnourished and neglected grandmother behind closed doors, left alone and abandoned to die.

It was not a dream, it was my mother’s grandma in those final moments before she passed from this life to the next, that she used her voice and spoke audibly and clearly to a heart that heard. A dream better wished to remain a dream, yet in the passing of one consciousness to the next, the dream was the communication path of the transition from this life to the next; the changing of the guards and passing of the baton from one generation to the next.

My own memories of this house were nothing about the green grass, white bricks, flowers and picket fences. It was the stench of dog poop a week, to month, old and pee covered up by newspaper on the floor hardly disguised by the thick clouds of cigarette smoke, cats staring down from the holes in sinking burn scarred ceilings. This was the kind of “Grandma’s house”I grew up visiting. Let’s just say it was much more like visiting a haunted house; scared to go in and ready to leave. This not only was the house my mom grew up in, but it was also where her dad was shot, she was abused, her grandmother was killed, and the house that tried to burn down and cover all the mess within. Nonetheless, not only was it still standing with fire-charred walls and all, it was “home” for my mother’s mom, of which I never gave the honorable title of grandma to. If her frail, sickly body, all of about 80 pounds, hidden in a 6 feet frame said enough. 

“It was a new idea, a breakthrough of science, a way out, a secret death that no one had to know about, silence to the outside world but inside agony, shame, and weeping loss. A self-made discovery of free choice; the lie of “freedom”. A ticket out if you weren’t ready to face the consequences of your choices... The lure of convenience, fun and free will that says everything will be alright, at least for me for the time being. The words she shared echoed in my mind, and never before had I realized how right she was. Until this moment, I neverunderstood like I did now. A conversation with my mom’s best friend of 20+years opened my eyes to capture the essence of the perspective of the times; the culture my mother found herself in when she made the choice to abort.A decision made out of hopelessness, both as a result of the painful years compounded and as a temporary solution to the problems she foresaw as becoming a mother. It was the result born out of a culture of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. A feminist movement that screamed freedom from all responsibility and free love for all, but was it?

“She never even liked you or gave you a moment›s notice. Just days after you were born we took you to see her and all we could get out of her was a look away from the paper with an uninterested countenance,” my dad recalled.“Oh, looks like a cute one you have there,” was all she said. That’s it. My body felt it. I heard it. My spirit knew it. These were my first days and some of the first words my body had to reconcile. I was rejected by those who were supposed to love me. I’ve been told the story more than my soul wants to remember it. These were not only some of the first words I heard the first days of my life, and the voices I would battle for the rest of my life. The story that would replay not only from the words of my grandma’s mouth, but the ones I would have to distinguish from real or imagined. If it wasn’t in the relationship I never shared with this grandma it would be something I would face with my mother, father, their friends and later in life with my husband, friends and other loved ones. Rejection, once it surfaces, is a hard one to put away. Rejection can act as a ceiling that prevents you from growing,or a bottomless pit that keeps you offended and holds you in the depths.

Caught amid a secret. In both the chaotic and lonely cloud of shame is where I find the little girl Kelsey shouldering the weight of her world. Until about 16, when I reached a pivotal point in healing my story, most of my memories started as picture slides, with scattered feelings of shame, loneliness and confusion. This montage blended with significant gaps of time left the chronology of time broken in chunks and pieces, which ironically is how I remember feeling most of my life ... “broken.” While I was learning to accept the challenges of instability, chaos and uncertainty at home, everything my heart craved for connection, safety and love I was given when I was at grandma’s house, the problem was, it was thousands of miles away. Grandma’s house was “home”in my heart: the one place where my life felt normal and safe. When I wasn’t there, change was my “normal” and progress was measured by hope, but Grandma’s house was the place I learned peace in the process of growth was possible. As a young girl, faith was my solid anchor. I believed God would give me a life like the one I felt, craved and knew was possible with the glimpse of hope I had at grandma’s house.