And Continued Into The Hotel

I’ve been encouraged by some of my closest friends to continue delving deeper into my childhood trauma - GOD! Was there a LOT of it. I’m not gonna’ lie - a lot of this I’ve suppressed for decades…actively hidden from both myself and others as well. As the sand begins to run out of my hourglass I think it’s time to address more of it. When I wrote It Began At The Kitchen Table, I had absolutely no idea that it would balloon as it has. That’s both a bad thing and a good thing. Bad in that it forces me to pull more of the dirty laundry out and good that it allows me to wash it and put it out in the sun to dry.

Today, I’m going to share more of it and wonder how many of my readers and other random strangers will understand it, dwell on it, and either abandon me or confess their own secrets. Huge question, there?

So, another memory that plagues me even to this day, was the time I went with my “parents” and my grandfather (remember, I was adopted?). “Grandpaw” was my maternal grandfather. He was a magical and intriguing character. He was the “wise old man” of our ‘family.’ I feared and respected and loved him at the same time. I felt so sorry for him because his wife, Thelma, had passed on of hepatitis - I think they called it “chirrosis of the liver” in later years.

I definitely remember the time I saw Jesus. I was 7 years old. At her burial ceremony, we were at the cemetery. and I had wandered off down the various red-clay paths that wandered through the cemetery. I was but a child in the moment, and was told to “dress up” in my best “Sunday clothes.” (My mother told me to do this.) I was standing there and saw - clearly - Jesus Christ standing at the junction of a path and some obscure adjoining trail. I remember clearly his white garments, and his face, and I just remember thinking, “My God! That’s Jesus!”

I know what they say about “repressed memories” and “hallucinations” and all that. But, this was real. I saw it clearly, and vividly and I still recall it today. Don’t even start to tell me I didn’t see it. I know what I saw. I immediately took off running back to the ceremony and grasped my “mother’s” hand. Her response was, “Don’t worry about it…you’re just seeing things. You’re imagining things because you’re sad about your Grandmaw.”

No. False. In fact, I cringed every time she tried to hug me or kiss me. She always smelled of stale, sour lavendar and bourbon. By the time she died, he caught her eating canned cat food several times as she started to lose her mind. They were both heavy drinkers. Every other summer, I was dumped off on one or the other sets of grandparents for a week so that my parents could have a week of alone time. I hated when I went to Longview, Texas. The countryside was beautiful - driving down the seemingly endless roads lined with stretches of red clay and bluebonnets. There was a large train switching yard at the base of the hill where the Knights of Columbus Hall was on Olive Street. I used to have to go with them on Wednesday nights when they went to play Bingo. All we had to do was walk across the street.

Every Wednesday it was the same routine. They’d be drinking all afternoon and taking two hours to get ready to walk across the street. When we arrived I would have to go sit in a little room where there was a tiny TV with a rabbit-ear antenna with little strips of foil hanging down, and other kids just like me. We were dropped off while the grownups drank and played bingo. We were like baggage and we felt it.

So, in 1964 the biggest thing going on anywhere was the World’s Fair in New York City. Grandpaw, flush with Grandmaw’s insurance payout and his retirement funds from Standard Oil, surprised us all with an all-expenses paid trip to New York and some kind of tickets that gained us admission every day for a week. We stayed at the Statler Hilton Hotel. I was fascinated and excited! So many “firsts!” First trip, first time on an airplane, first time going to a fair of any kind, first time in a hotel, first time eating from an Automat (a magical thing where you could put coins into a machine and receive in return an entire meal…everything was a first.

And every single day I returned to the hotel exhausted from all the walking and rides and gawking. I was 10 years old. There’s no way that I could repeat that today at 73!

I will never forget our lunch on a “slow day” when we went to Katz’s Deli! I had never even heard of pastrami, and certainly have never tasted anything quite so delicious since. And the Automat was a whole adventure in itself…it was an entire wall of windows, little glass-fronted cubicles with meals inside! Of course, I didn’t realize that there was an entire kitchen behind that wall with a staff furiously cooking and preparing those meals.

On the final night in The Statler Hilton, I fell asleep quickly. I was very tired - it had been our most strenuous day of all - and I knew that the next morning would be rushed and panicky, checking out, gathering our suitcases and rushing to the airport for that long flight back to Houston’s Hobby Airport.

I was sleeping soundly when I woke to something warm and wet and frantically thinking I might have wet the bed, thrust my hand down under the covers. I woke fully to realize that it was Grandpaw and he was trying to perform oral sex on me. I hadn’t even reached puberty yet, had no idea what an erection was and had never had “that talk” with anyone. It just had never even occurred to me that something like this was even possible. What was happening? I panicked and thrust him away from me and scrambled to my feet.

I was a tangle of emotions; I was scared, horrified, confused, embarassed…all of it and more. I scurried over to the couch away from him. He was now standing beside the bed, tears streaming down his face and a shameful look on his face. He begged me not to say anything to anybody, especially not to say anything to my mother. He tried to tell me that he missed Thelma so bad and that he was so lonely, and all I could do was sit there and cringe, not even look at him.

Within minutes, he went from crying and shameful to defiant and stern, forcefully telling me that I had “better not say anything to anybody,” then finally turned and went and got into bed. I spent the rest of the night sitting on that couch, trembling and staring out the window at all of the bright lights.

At dawn I hurried into the bathroom and brushed my teeth and washed my face; before he could awaken, found my suitcase and packed my clothes into it. A little over two hours later we were both downstairs waiting on my parents to finish checking out so we could cram into the cab that carried us to the airport.

It was a long flight back to Houston. Scared and shamed kids don’t usually have a lot to say. “I’m tired,” was my answer when anybody asked me what was wrong. That seemed a satisfactory and acceptable response and they all seemed happy with that, so I was able to lean my head against the window and feign sleep.

When we deplaned at Hobby, we took separate cabs home and I didn’t speak the entire time. Every time mother or daddy would ask me something like what was wrong or was I alright, I simply nodded and justified it with a yawn.

When we got home I grabbed my suitcase and almost ran into my room and closed the door. I was home, but I would never feel safe again. Not then, not when the events of my Kitchen Table essay happened.

I remain responsible for my actions. But what happens to a child can help explain some of the struggles experienced by the adult that child becomes. Maybe that is why I needed to see Jesus standing at the crossing of those cemetery paths.

Maybe the important question is not whether anyone else believes Jesus was actually there. Maybe the important question is why that frightened child needed him to be there.

Maybe I needed to believe that someone good was watching. Maybe I needed someone who could see what the adults around me could not see.

Someone who would believe me. Someone who would not hurt me.

I spent most of my life ashamed of what happened. But the shame did not belong to me. I was a child. Grandpaw was the adult.

I did not cause it. I did not invite it and I did not deserve it.

The shame was his, not mine. But, I’m the one who had to carry the weight of it with me for years and years.

My heart breaks at telling you this. I’m so ashamed of it! But, it is what it is. And, if I don’t tell you now, who will I tell, and when will I tell it?

Goodnight, all.

Get 30% off for 1 year