New Mercies

The people with a spiritual bent of the medieval period tried various methods of self-piety and abasement to find their way to holiness. Pebbles in their shoes, hair shirts, ice water baths, and self-flagellation were some of their methods. Anchorites used to wall themselves up with only a little hole to pass food and excrement through. Some ascetics sat in trees, tying themselves in. For some, over time, the coarse ropes would rub and chafe on the skin, dig it self in. They would try and out do each other, going higher in the tree, staying up longer. One famous ascetic stayed up long enough for his skin to grow back over the rope and his cloak, like a tree gown into a chain link fence. When I think about dropping my guard against the depression, I feel like that ascetic: the guard grown into the fabric of my being.

I remember a dream. There’s this pretty little storybook house with closed swinging barn like doors to an upper loft. The house was not taller than I am and as I reach out to the upper doors, they burst open reveling an enraged, terrified little boy. In his fist he’s got a grade school protractor made out of steel, its curved edge a sharpened blade and he’s swinging it at me wildly, screaming, “Get out. Get out. Get out.” The boy is very young, four or five, and of course, he is me.

That’s how the guard works, indiscriminately keeping everything out. I used to live my life with two rules: Don’t fuck with me and we’ll get along,” and “I don’t come out and you don’t get in.” I’ve made considerable progress over the last twenty years, bit by bit opening myself to others with the help of the Holy Spirit and those He has brought into my life; principally the Safe Place/metanoia people, my work groups, New Adam, and by no means last or least, Jackie my wife. But it seems there is always more darkness to bring into the light.

When I was about the age of the boy in the dream my uncle, a fat grease-ball in a suit, watch fob and all, would sit at the head of the kitchen table. He was my father’s older brother, the one who bullied him into adult hood. The man he worked for. He’d come over in his late model Cadillac, walk in like a fat prince. My mother made his something to eat. My father sat at the table with him and poured him shots of whiskey, and call to my mother when they needed a beer. A place setting was set before my uncle and then he would call to me in Italian, “Miguel, vin aquee.” Something like that.

“Your uncle’s calling you,” My father would say.

Eventually I would be standing along side him, just tall enough to see over the table. He made me get him a knife, usually sending me back for a sharper one. The he’d start telling me how much he liked me. In fact, he liked me so much he wanted to eat me up. Fork and knife ready in his hands, “Put you hand in the plate,” he told me.

“He just playing with you,” was all my father said. My mother stood staring into her pot at the kitchen stove.

After much stern cajoling my hand would be in the plate. I wouldn’t jerk it away when he reached with the knife and fork. He’d mention how plump a juicy my fingers looked and witch knuckle he would start cutting at and he put the knife to my finger so I could feel it’s sharpness, and he would say something about not spoiling his appetite and how I was probably to stringy anyway, a scrawny little thing like me. My ma would bring him his food. My father poured him another shot.

“Come on now. Don’t be a baby. Your uncle’s just playing with you. Char? Give him a piece of bread and butter.”

What I wonder is, if I remember that, is there more I don’t remember? Is there still something behind the doors of the storybook house the little boy is afraid to let me see?

I‘ve been thinking about the dream, that the protractor maybe means school, which would fit with the storybook. At Saint John’s, I flunked second grade, every subject, and every category, without exception. I received an unsatisfactory in every little box on the card save one. I don’t remember the exact wording, but basically, it said my grade were satisfactory considering what the child was capable of.

In second grade sometimes we were put in the coat closet/storage room for punishment. I remember hiding in the coats, a wet fur winter smell, and the fur against my face. All the other teachers I had at Saint John’s were nuns. My teacher for second grade I remember as a young girl. I pretty sure she pulled down my pants to spank me now and then and sometimes I got sent home for peeing in them.

It’s hard to tell that far back what is memory and what is a story I’ve cobbled together over the years or if it even makes much difference when you go that far back. I don’t know if I can go deep enough to get to the bottom of thing. When it comes down to it, I don’t know if there’s a bottom to get to. To paraphrase Paul, who will save me from this retched body of memory? Thanks be to God, Whose mercies are new every morning and Who makes broken things whole.