This essay was written during a 2 day Writer's Workshop at Full Circle Retreat, outside of my home town. It was a gloriously inspiring, moving and amazing experience - Deb, our facilitator came with a bounty of tools, insights, and personal experience, as well the gift of deep listening and heart-felt encouragement. Our inner voices came forth haltingly, then soared beyond expectation. We celebrated our humanity, the struggles, the joy, humor, tears and hope.
The exercise that preceded this piece of writing was the following. We were asked to draw a map or some aspect of our childhood environment; our home, our neighborhood, our yard...whatever we were called to remember and put on paper. Then we were asked to place numbers, starting at 1 for every memory or story we had for places or people on the map. Finally, we were to pick one of those places or people - actually the places or people were picking us - so to honor that and write spontaneously from and about that particular place. No judgment or censor! Here is what I wrote.
STAIRWAYS
There were 5 interior stairways in the house that I spent most, but not all of my first 22 years in with my family. Basement stairs, a back staircase, a front staircase, and two that led to third floor areas of the house. The stairway that I traversed most often as a child was the back stairway that led from the kitchen area to a section of the second floor. It was a narrow, windowless, enclosed stairway with a door at the bottom and a small swinging baby gate at the top. It rose over the stairs to the basement. I remember falling down the full stairway at some point in my childhood - top to bottom. I don't recall why, if I was hurt or if anyone came to my aid - just the falling - hurling down, limbs and body spiraling down at the mercy of the downward plunge.
At the top of this stairway was a narrow hallway with 2 doors to the left, one straight ahead and two to the right. All led to small bedrooms except the far one to the left. This was the area of the house where, as babies and young children, we 4 siblings each had nurseries or bedrooms along with our "Nana" or hired caregiver, of which there were many in a series.
I was my parents first-born child and moved into this house as an infant or toddler, before my younger brother was born. My siblings and I spent most of the indoor time of our childhoods in this two story zone - up and down those stairs between the outside world, the kitchen area and or bedrooms; thousands of climbs and descents, as regular and familiar as breath.
I have some memories of happenings in those rooms above the kitchen. I remember being made to sleep in the room at the end of the hall (probably more than once) with whomever was our caregiver at the time - . She was not a kindly soul, I seem to recall. She had caught me biting my nails and had put some nasty tasting stuff on my fingers and then had me sleep beside her so she could monitor my nibbling.
I remember the small bathroom there, not well tended to or upgraded over the years when some of the other ones were. Once, while in grade school, I had dashed up to use the bathroom and was terribly startled to find some sort of creature staring back at me from inside the toilet. A very large rat, a mink, a fisher cat perhaps? I dashed downstairs to the kitchen to tell someone of my discovery. Once I was able to find someone who was willing to come upstairs with me, the animal was no where in sight. I thought that it had found its way up the pipe to the toilet and simply gone back down again. I do remember that my story was discounted as childish imagination. It was definitely real to me then and it is to this day. Real but unexplainable.
I also remember periodically having my mouth washed out with soap ( Ivory, it floats!) in that bathroom over the kitchen, for some unacceptable utterance, by some caregiver or other. My parents rarely if ever ventured into this section of the house. Their rooms were on the opposite side of the house above the formal living areas and accessed by the front stairway. This area was the domain of babies, children and "the servants".
I don't recall what bedroom I slept in as an infant or toddler - perhaps the little room first to the right at the top of this back stairway. I have a photo of me in that room in the same bed that was my mother's childhood bed. I, in my satin robe holding a beloved dolly. I remember looking out of my tiny window, watching a kindly caregiver, cook, or maid being driven away - never to return; the never-ending spiral of loving, loss and longing already embedded my body and my soul.
