AN END AND A BEGINNING

table

The child abuse situation took a turn on Monday morning. Justin does not need to jeopardize his own life with manslaughter charges or kick some ass. The state of North Carolina will be doing the ass kicking for him. I imagine by now the man that hits children to hurt them is looking at his future as a big black hole about to swallow him. I can only feel sorrow for him, because the punishment, in my way of seeing, is greater than the crime. But that's not my call. America is a venal society. He'd have got off better with one good ass-kicking and ball bat bruises on his head from Justin. That would have set him straight. But this is better. He was wrecking a little girl's life, and now it's his life that is wrecked. Thanks to him, little girl will now have a life.

tree dance

She's a tough little kid who has already been through a lot at 5. The hitting hurt like hell, but it was also what she was used to. The worst part is getting used to it. Now she can feel safe, cared for, protected. One thing she knows at the age of 5 is her daddy will protect her. The fear she's lived with will fade away. Her daddy will also teach her over time how to protect herself. She's already a good fighter, living with a half-brother 3 years older, who is seething with anger as a child does who lives in fear. The day I saw the boy, I noted to Justin the importance of getting the girl away from him before he goes into puberty. The growth hormones in fast food burgers are bringing kids into puberty sooner than ever now. The girl was in severe danger.

red umbrella

 

The last couple of days have been about the happiest of my life. My eyes have been wet all day both days, and many times dropping a tear from joy. I didn't realize how much I cared about her, loved her. I didn't realize how important we are to each other. I'd only see her a time or two a month, and then she was on short-term vacation, jumping out of her skin from her nervous condition living in fear. When she ran to me and clung to me the rest of the time I was at the house, I realized I must be something like a grandpa for her she shares her joy with. I pay attention to her is probably what did it. I forget that adults don't pay attention to kids except to correct them. When an adult pays attention to a kid, for the kid it is a big deal, noticed by a grownup as something besides in the way. I automatically connect with a kid with eye contact and listen to what they want to tell me, regarding the individual within the same as I regard the individual within an adult. The only difference I see between a child and an adult is size and experience.

kitty-kitty

The experience part is the key word. Human adults have such powerful and complex psychic energy, I have a hard time with too much of it. I recall the Zatoichi movies, Japanese, of Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman. He was a samurai monk. His walking stick was his sword. When the sword left its sheath it drew blood. He could feel psychic energy from adults. No adult could slip up on him from behind or any direction. Children could slip up on Zatoichi, because they're not radiating the energy we adults give off like the scent of a skunk that precedes it. Zatoichi loved the children and the children loved him. There are a couple of Zatoichi movies, both of them good films. Steven Seagal's character that ran through his different roles was based in Zatoichi. Like Zatoichi, he took care of children and drunks. Zatoichi comes to mind whenever I feel especially intense energy radiating from somebody. His eyes could not see, but he had this gift of seeing energy.

caterpillar

I feel happy all the way around. I'm struggling for a word all day I can't find. The impulse is to say I am proud of Justin for who he is. But proud is not the word. It's the easy word for what I'm feeling, not the word itself. To say proud is like I'm taking credit for something. It's not me, it's him. I've known him all his life and I know he has in him what he is showing right now. Like he said to me on the telephone earlier, "I'll die for my young'uns." It was not an idle cliché spoken for the sound of it. I know he means it. His young'uns will grow up knowing that. I know one little girl whose daddy is her super-hero. That's what I've been seeing that has my sea of emotion in big waves, a helpless and hopeless little child living in fear and anger, rescued, safe, loved, understood, appreciated, starting over with all new clothes, even a new school where she has cousins. No mementos of bad memories. It's more awe I feel for Justin than pride. It's awe to see Justin with such stature as a man. And it's not that he's doing the right thing so much as seeing it an expression of his heart, the emotional health of his heart. Through this experience I've seen that Justin's heart and his mind work together as one. That's what I'm in awe of.

swimming pool

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DON'T HIT THE LITTLE CHILDREN

Today has been a teary-eyed day, joy mixed with sorrow, from getting up this morning unto now and will go on probably the rest of the day. My friends Justin and Crystal have been saving money toward a court battle to get Justin's 5 year old girl away from her mother, who has already alienated her child. The little girl showed up for weekend visitation with week-old serious bruises on her rear end and the outsides of both legs. She was hit with something the thickness of a broom handle. The girl said it was a "switch," but the size of the bruises was more like a club. I went to the house yesterday to see the Talladega race. They'd called earlier to say they were taking the girl to Protective Services. Somebody was on-call on Sunday. I was watching the race when they drove up. The girl ran to me when she opened the door, threw her arms around my neck and said, "I don't have to go back!" In her eyes, it was the best day of her life. Turns out biker-mom has taken in a new man to live with her. A month or so ago I rode with Crystal to take the girl back on a Sunday afternoon. Child cried all the way. Boyfriend was there to pick up little girl, a guy closing in on 40. A look at him and all my alarms went off. He glared at little girl like she was going to get it when they return to the house. I told Crystal I don't like the way he looked at her. I suddenly became afraid for her. One of those situations that I can't do anything to help the child I've learned to love, but prayer from the heart. It was a cry from the heart.

 

Crystal telling about the bruises on the phone, that they were on their way to Protective Services to report the incident, came to me as answer to prayer. I thought: that was fast! I didn't realize I was so important to her, which I found when she was sitting on my knee almost the whole time I was there, sitting like she was in a safe zone where she was protected. She was happy like I'd never seen her before. I'd seen her laugh and play, but not yet had I seen her joy. I wanted to say something to her like I was sorry she had to be hurt so bad, but it never felt appropriate. I'd told her I was happy for her and glad she didn't have to go back. That felt like good enough to express my true feeling with her. I was more happy for her than I was sorry about the incident. Without the incident, getting her away from mama would be an expensive court case people who work for a living can't afford. Now they don't need court. Justin said it's a "slam dunk." I've seen the child break into tears on a Sunday afternoon when it was time to go back to mama. I knew her situation there was not a good one for a little kid at all, I hoped they could get her, but I also do not know other people's karma, other people's needs. I don't know anything concerning a child whose mother I have only seen. I knew from her treatment of her child that she was indifferent to her baby and probably still thought of her as an unwanted pregnancy. The mother, herself, is a damaged child.

 

Justin told me it was the maddest he'd ever been in his life, and he's had plenty of his own bruises nobody could save him from. He has a fairly short fuse. And one thing I know, a man goes putting bruises on Justin's baby, that man will have a day of suffering in the near future. From the one time I saw him, I could see he could not take Justin out in a fight, but believes he can. The believing he can is what's going to bite him in the ass. The only thing I can say for certain, that guy's in trouble. I guarantee if they ever meet face to face, Justin will want somebody to pull him off the guy before he kills him. He's afraid he might not have the self-control to stop himself. The guy hit the wrong man's little girl. He will have his day and will be awhile recovering from it. I applaud Justin. I look forward to hearing about it. This is something a man has to take care of, himself. If I didn't have full confidence Justin can do what needs to be done, I'd be calculating my own move. I am someone who likes living in peace, likes to let karma take care of justice. I also believe in honoring our humanity. I understand crimes of passion. The American legal system does not, but it's so slipshod at justice, court being a poker game between lawyers, sometimes a man has to make his own justice. It is possible Justin may let it go and give it to karma to settle with the man that hits children to hurt them. Justin has the potential of releasing a lifetime of frustration on a child-abusing son of a bitch that hurt his baby.

Last Tuesday I dreamed before waking I saw Justin standing in the window glowing red from rage, frustration, helplessness. I told him about the dream. He said he had stopped by Tuesday morning and looked in the window, saw I wasn't up yet and went on. By the time I brought up the dream we'd been all the way through the telling of the incident. That glowing red rage is what he felt when he learned about the bruises. That image of him glowing red was the maddest I'd ever seen him. I wondered during the week if something had happened, thought about calling, but decided not to be thinking I'm having premonition dreams. I'm something of an anti-alarmist. I don't like to make conclusions over a dream's possible meaning. I just find it curious that next time I saw him, five days later, he was feeling that rage I saw in the dream. Little girl's joy was so profound, a lightness was about her. Her movements were spontaneous dance. The pupils of her eyes showed joy. She really had been rescued. Now she has a home, instead of a place where she was always in the way. Today I've been feeling fullness in the heart, my cup runneth over as tears from time to time, remembering everybody's air of celebration Sunday, happy for my baby-doll that she now has a life of openly being loved, or that she simply has a life.

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FOR BEING GOOD TO A KID

robert motherwell, red

It was in my first years in the mountains, late 1970s, that Malissie Pruitt told me something that stuck with me. In those years I was enamoured of country wisdom, still am, though the old wisdom is going away with the old people. About all that's left of country wisdom by now is in nursing homes on the foggy mountain top of memory loss. I remember Malissie was standing at the sink working in the kitchen and I was standing beside the refrigerator, we were talking. I don't remember what we were talking about, but she said, "Be good to a child and you'll have a friend for life." That's the kind of knowledge I think of as wisdom. I tend to be sympathetic with kids, appreciate them as individuals, am able to listen to kids and roll a ball back and forth without end. I like a child's point of view that is not yet corrupted with traditional ways of seeing and thinking, expectations, and then the sexual confusion at whatever age puberty happens now that puts an end to childhood like a door slammed in your face. It's easy for me to be good to a kid, and I did see over time that kids I knew continue to know me after they grow up and we're always glad to see each other.

Then, maybe five or so years later a kid was born I didn't yet know. When he was about two, I became acquainted with his daddy putting up hay and working together. Became friendly with the family and visited them more and more as time went by. I became a friend with everyone in the house. The boy was having a rough time that I recognized as a version of the hard time I went through in my vulnerable years. An insane daddy. In my time, a couple who were friends of my parents, Jack and DeLouris, became my "witnesses," meaning they witnessed what I was going through at home. I found in a book I think by Swiss psychologist Alice Miller that a witness is very important to the child in cases of what we call now abuse. Then it was called getting the shit beat out of you every day, for any reason, even "general principles." I learned that hitting kids only makes them angry and breaks down systematically the bond of love a child automatically feels for a parent. The child is put in a place where survival within oneself requires backing away into deeper and deeper resentment until it turns to hate.

In the register of deeds vault I was doing my work and a lawyer I knew was in there. Somebody he knew saw him and came into the space talking to him about a turn of events in his life. He lost his boy. The boy left and won't have anything to do with him. He was down in the heart about it. I felt nothing even remotely close to sympathy for him. I thought: treat somebody like shit and this is what you get. You had plenty of time to think about it. I left my parent situation and went as far as land allows, to the coast. Love for both parents was beat out of me by the time I was ten. From then on, the hitting and wisecracks only further alienated me. And of course, guess what. It's MY fault. It's always the kid's fault. The kid won't mind. I hated to let go of love for daddy and mommy, but to hold myself together, I needed to separate myself from them. My silent mantra upon being berated and knocked about was, You can control my body all you want, but you will never have access to my mind. And I shut myself off to them. Around them I wore a mask of obedience, and behind the mask I was myself. Didn't know who or what myself was, but I was I, and neither one of them would ever see who I am. Because no matter what I was or was not, it was in need of ongoing correction. Not guidance, but punishment. When I left them I never wanted to see them again the rest of my life, and I knew that. It wasn't an emotional reaction. I have seen them, but it's always been duty, like going to church.

I saw this little boy going through what I went through from that age. Watching him grow up was for me a review of my own relationship with my daddy. An anti-relationship is what it amounted to. I saw my little friend's daddy creating an anti-relationship with him, too. I chose to continue being a friend to his daddy, not out of respect, but because his wife told me that "when you're here, he's an angel." And I never saw anything angelic in the way he treated the kids. I thought then I can't do anything to stop the abuse, but I can be a witness for the kids, one who understands that they are right in not liking being beaten daily. And it's not their fault. By my presence they were treated less viciously. That was the best I could give them and still be able to know them. I'd think to them without saying it, just hang on, do the best you can, and bear with it til you reach the magic age of liberation, eighteen. Then you're free. Nobody can help you now. Social Services would only make it worse. Assassination works, but it's not an option. I watched my young friends bear with it. It brought back much of what I'd been through. What I learned was that I was not the problem. I was the target of an undiagnosed insane man who thought he was a rooster. I was better able to understand my own situation seeing it objectively outside myself. I was able to extend understanding to my young friends, and they got it. By "they" I mean his little sister too. We couldn't talk about it, but I believe telepathy flows over lines of love. 

How many times I heard, "I want some respect outta you!" All I could think was, Show me something to respect. It goes without saying, I was not allowed to say anything. That would be talking back. The biggest problem was that I dared not ever say what I thought about any of it. I could only speak a long string of expletives supporting the occasional word toward eventually completing a phrase. I remember with a laugh the time he said, "I outta hit you for what you're thinking." I laughed inside, thinking, If you really knew what I was thinking, you'd kill me. That I live tells me you don't have any idea what's in my mind. I was free. Like a good schizophrenic, I dove within, the only place where I was free. My body and my decision making were shut down. But my mind was my own. I recently saw a guy in a Norwegian movie, ELLING, who had been similarly driven within, alas so far in that he couldn't come back. It's a beautiful movie if you can tolerate subtitles. I only watch subtitled movies, so it's no problem for me.

My young friend whose childhood I witnessed for his mental health sake turned eighteen. Daddy rooster went apeshit at the loss of control, brought an ultimatum to me that I can't be friends with both of them. OK. It wasn't even a decision for me whose friend I was. That was the end of friendship with the daddy I had lost all respect for by then. I told young'un he had some years of inner wildman cut loose going off in all directions ahead of him. All I asked was he survive it. And he did. By now, he's turning thirty next birthday, and has turned out to be one of the very best friends of my life. I won't try to grade my friends in best, next-best, or anything like that. It is a love in the heart that is the same in every case, like loving your kids. In my adult life, my friends have the most value of anything else in my life. Friends come first. No two ways about it. Less than a year ago, somebody I know was throwing off on my young friend and I had to interrupt him and mention that he was the same as my own, so when it comes to taking sides, that's already set. What all this is coming down to is I was good to a kid and now that kid has grown into a friend I could trust absolutely, in the true sense of the old-fashioned, pre-facebook meaning of friend. He has a fabulous wife who loves him and kids that love him. He loves all of them. And I am happy to see he is able to have a life post-eighteen of effusive love in his own home.


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