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Words You Don’t Forget

When I was growing up, every June, my parents would pack up our VW bus, just as school was letting out for the summer, and we’d make the hot, sticky drive to somewhere around Bemidji–a small private lake called Star Lake–where there was a rustic cabin that was rented out to us for one week, at a very low cost, since my father was a pastor.  We kids loved it–we took loads of library books, and we swam and canoed to our hearts’ content.  The hikes were a little overwhelming–you had to know my dad.  They never seemed to end.  But for my dad, he was doing what he had loved as a child.

I remember wanting to be everything for him, so I tolerated the long hikes, kept quiet (when we weren’t singing), and even brought along plant and flower identification books, so we could label things, name things.  It was one of those hikes that ended badly for my younger brother, and it was then that I knew my father hated my brother–for what, I had no idea.

So, today I talk about labels and names and jeers and slams–all dismissed readily with an “I was just joking” or an irritating laugh.  Thing is: everyone who hears the name calling knows it wasn’t a joke; it was for real.  And growing up in such a family, you do the only thing you know how to do–either laugh at yourself or zing one back at the perpetrator or walk out of the room.

First, you must know that all of us seven kids were rail thin.  I look back at pictures, and we all look like waifs, pining for our next meal.  Whenever I wore a swimsuit, which was regularly in the summer–whenever we’d go to Fort Snelling State Park or Cedar Lake–my father would wait until I took off my t-shirt and shorts, wait until I was headed down to the shoreline, to call after me, “Bombity bombity bom bom bom.”  I took it to heart, as only a sensitive young girl could, and ever since, I can never look at my thighs, really look at them and love them.  For what he was mocking was the sound that my bum and thighs would have made, had they been fat.  But I’ve dug up pictures, half wanting my childhood pictures to show that I was fat, so he would have been right, but no, there I am, as skinny as a two by four.

I’ve since wondered where he got that phrase and why he repeated it.  Perhaps he was saying it to me, because he wanted to say it to his wife who was continually pregnant (but not pudgy at all!), and he felt that if he said it to me, he could say to her, “See?  I don’t mean anything.  I’m saying it to Elissa, too.”  I’m unclear as to his motive or reason.  Like many things he said to me over the years.

Dan, my husband, has said it’s sad to receive the product of an abusive parent; I have so many neuroses about certain phrases, certain words, and no matter what Dan says, it can’t erase the hurt.  Dan says I have fine thighs (ha, ha), but there’s always a lingering unsavory doubt about what he’s trying to do.  I’ve tried to relearn the jeers, the names, in different contexts (to get rid of the negative connotations), and it’s helped mildly.

My father labeled me as many things throughout the years, most of them uttered at the weirdest times.  He asked me what I was thinking when I wore a mini-skirt on a date with Dan.  He said I was the smart daughter, not the beautiful one.  He said he thought mathematics was the ultimate endeavor, since it was a “hard” science, not a “soft” science (like biology).  I spent the first two and a half years of college as a mathematics major, until I realized, stupidly, that my own father had been a biology major (which is exactly what I wanted to do!).  Immediate change of plans: I signed on as a biology major and never looked back.

My father seemed confused, a little disoriented, when it came to his children, and he lashed out in ways that his children didn’t understand and took to mean as hate (or dislike, whatever you want to call it).  Later in life–thank goodness my mother was on the phone to back me up–I said to him, “Dad, you sound like you hate me!”  To which he replied, “No, I don’t.”  And my mother said, “Yes, Dave, you do.”  To which he grunted.  I was thirty-one.

When we were on the beach today with Liliana, I was thinking these things, wondering what Liliana will have to contend with, as she begins learning what certain words mean and what various pictures (advertisements, commercials) endorse.  Dan and I have made a pact never to talk about anything physical, in the sense that she can’t change that part of her.  If she’s unkind or mean, then we may encourage her to change her ways…but the physical elements are off-limits.

So, remember the childhood chant, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?”  It’s false, false, false.

Sadly, I can only protect Liliana with what I say to her.

Okay, to end on a lighter note, I’ll leave you with a delightful tour of Nancy Mim’s house (she’s the designer of mod green pod).  You can see it here.  Look for her daughter’s framed collection of natural things, labeled phonetically.  Don’t you love it?  A great example of helpful and creative labeling.

[Post image: Liliana showing me the water is salty]

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