First Taste of Independence

1957

On day one I became the fourth of four busy children my mother governed while my father was building a business and together they suffered survivor’s guilt; having lived in Canada while parents and siblings were murdered in the holocaust. 

On day one of the fifth grade my father had recently died, my mother was unexpectedly a tired working mom with one married daughter, two teenagers and me, 10 years old with a Dennis the Menace personality bargaining for attention and affection in our busy family. 

A defining event was my mother having a temper tantrum in response to me crossing some line making life harder for her. I remember her in a blue dress face down on the kitchen floor crying and beating her hands and feet like a two year old unfulfilled in a Walmart toy aisle. She was fifty.

In retrospect I'm sure her complaints included more than me but I was alone with her in the moment. My tool box was bare. I couldn't begin to help. I was paralyzed, powerless, weak.

A first taste of what it meant to be a person.

March 2020