I look at the intersecting plots in my life, noting the major and minor themes:
1
I grew up in a poor, working-class family in Newark and then Irvington, New Jersey. My father drove a truck for Fischer’s Bakery, delivering bread and cakes to supermarkets. His salary—or what he gave of it to my mother—was not always enough to cover the expenses of running a household with six children.
Mom paid the dentist a dollar a week. We got hand-me-down clothes from my rich cousins. We bought cheap shoes at the cheap shoe store.
Sometimes we only got by with help from The Friendly Loan Company.
When Dad lost too much of his salary playing the horses, Mom had to finally put her foot down. Thankfully, Dad was able to control his impulses.
Today I can’t throw away food, even if it would be better to throw it away than to eat it.
I know I can survive, if I have to, on less.
It still feels good to just be able to pay my bills at the end of the month.
2
I was born the fourth child, first girl of three in a family of six children. I rejected cooking, cleaning, nurturing—anything that had the taint of confined womanhood. I strove to compete with my brothers, to find a way to be someone in the world. I worked hard to beat men at their own games.
It took many years for me to figure out that I like being female, I like to cook, and that sisters are a special gift.
3
I will never forget the day I was playing with the things on my mother’s dresser and accidently broke a bottle of her perfume.
Mom scolded me, and that was probably the end of it for her, but for me it was the beginning of guilt. Real guilt for bad things I’ve done. Imagined guilt for the hurt I might have inflicted on those around me. Anticipatory guilt for things I’ve contemplated doing. Extra guilt for things I think I should have done but did not do. Preparatory guilt for the bad things I will do in the future.
Isn’t everything that goes wrong my fault?
4
My family moved from Newark to Irvington when I was in the middle of third grade. That was the beginning of my remembered life because everything that happened to me at that time was traumatic.
There was a bus I was supposed to take to and from the new school, but one day after school I became very nervous waiting to cross the street to get to my bus stop. I couldn’t stand the tension any more, and then a bus stopped at the corner I was standing on, so I got on that bus.
At the end of the line I was the only person on the bus. The driver pulled into his depot and asked me where I lived. He called my mother and then put me on the right bus to get home.
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A girl on my block invited me to her birthday party, and then afterwards accused me of having stolen a doll she had gotten for a present. That’s when I learned the world could be a hostile place.
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I was frightened of authority at the new school. When a teacher complained that students were asking too often to leave the room, I was afraid to tell her that I had to use the bathroom.
I had an accident, and an older boy was assigned to walk me home. Shame, shame, shame.
5
I’ve left out so many early plot lines: my love of art and crafts . . . the comfort of my dog, Lucky . . . finding a best friend.
Our lives are complex, with intersecting plot lines beginning, playing out, and trailing off. It is in the examination that we find a thread of meaning.