obeyed.
We thought she’d outgrow it, as children outgrow the tooth fairy. She didn’t, and by age six, we were afraid she’d be humiliated at some friend’s house. So the TV began to disobey her little by little. It was both heartbreaking and comical to see her keep swinging and poofing to no avail. I told her the TV grew up and had its own power now.
“Oh, no, it didn’t, Mother, TVs don’t grow up!”
There are so many ways we commit crimes against our children, even out of love. She didn’t want to grow up and leave her magic behind. I didn’t want her to, either.
She eventually realized she didn’t have The Power, but she wasn’t ready to give up magic yet. So, God got the job. But how could we be sure He was qualified?
I had no idea what to tell her. I’d never talked to her about God and she’d never seen me pray. I’d never seen me pray. My experience of the divine was entirely culinary. Potato pancakes at Hannukah, matzoh at Passover, starvation at Yom Kippur.
Absent any help from me, Mia decided to prove not just God’s existence, but his usefulness. “If there is a God, why doesn’t he do somethingalready? I mean like now , not fifty years ago when he parted the Red Sea.” She came up with a True Test, one that would vastly improve her life.
She had a terrible fear of toilets “overflooding and drownding” her. We always had to flush it after she was a safe distance from the bathroom.
“Mother, Paul,” she announced grandly, “I’m going to the bathroom and I’m going to ask God not to overflood it and drownd me when I flush. Weeee’ll see if there’s really a God.”
We waited in the hall while the exam was administered. She went. She flushed. We could just picture her waiting for the rising tide with her hands over her eyes. She finally emerged, beaming and proud.
It’s not every child that’s able to prove that there’s a God. And she expected Him to be darned grateful she did.
It was in her play that I saw remnants of the abuse in her emotional life. A recurring theme in Mia’s psyche was of evil lurking behind good. The clown of her nightmares always pulled off his blond wig to become Nick. When she played with her horses, the kind, strong stallion would suddenly become evil and try to devour the younger horses. The mother horse was always shuttling her foals from one “secret cave” to another to protect them.
I heard Mia muttering after midnight once and went in to find her combing her stuffed animals. An evil man made an oil slick on purpose, she whispered, and left them to die, so she was cleaning their fur to save them. Her horses and stuffies had as many calamities as they had tea parties.
Her nightmares had stayed behind in Chicago, but her memories apparently hadn’t. Her second-grade teacher, Sara, a gentle, perceptive woman in her forties, called us in to show us Mia’s weekly journal.
“Sometimes I feel bad when I think of certain events,” Mia wrote, “such as when my old dad did bad things to me. But all I have to do is not think about it and then I feel better.”
She assured us she’d keep Mia’s journal confidential should she want to continue writing about “certain events.” Sara and Mia forged a deep bond that soon included Paul and I. She had a calm, spiritual presence that was often an anchor for our family.
I asked Mia if she still remembered what Nick did to her. She looked at me as if I was daft.
“Of course, I do, Mama,” she said. “I just don’t remember which birthday it happened on.” Then she wagged her finger at me and scolded, “You know, Mother, you shouldn’ta got married with that man.”
How could I reply? Tell her that if I hadn’t, she wouldn’t be here? What a terrible truth for her to one day realize. The price she paid for her existence.
“He did what ?” said Judge Moran, outraged.
I had flown back to Chicago to settle a child support dispute, and my lawyer told him that Nick had remarried
We thought she’d outgrow it, as children outgrow the tooth fairy. She didn’t, and by age six, we were afraid she’d be humiliated at some friend’s house. So the TV began to disobey her little by little. It was both heartbreaking and comical to see her keep swinging and poofing to no avail. I told her the TV grew up and had its own power now.
“Oh, no, it didn’t, Mother, TVs don’t grow up!”
There are so many ways we commit crimes against our children, even out of love. She didn’t want to grow up and leave her magic behind. I didn’t want her to, either.
She eventually realized she didn’t have The Power, but she wasn’t ready to give up magic yet. So, God got the job. But how could we be sure He was qualified?
I had no idea what to tell her. I’d never talked to her about God and she’d never seen me pray. I’d never seen me pray. My experience of the divine was entirely culinary. Potato pancakes at Hannukah, matzoh at Passover, starvation at Yom Kippur.
Absent any help from me, Mia decided to prove not just God’s existence, but his usefulness. “If there is a God, why doesn’t he do somethingalready? I mean like now , not fifty years ago when he parted the Red Sea.” She came up with a True Test, one that would vastly improve her life.
She had a terrible fear of toilets “overflooding and drownding” her. We always had to flush it after she was a safe distance from the bathroom.
“Mother, Paul,” she announced grandly, “I’m going to the bathroom and I’m going to ask God not to overflood it and drownd me when I flush. Weeee’ll see if there’s really a God.”
We waited in the hall while the exam was administered. She went. She flushed. We could just picture her waiting for the rising tide with her hands over her eyes. She finally emerged, beaming and proud.
It’s not every child that’s able to prove that there’s a God. And she expected Him to be darned grateful she did.
It was in her play that I saw remnants of the abuse in her emotional life. A recurring theme in Mia’s psyche was of evil lurking behind good. The clown of her nightmares always pulled off his blond wig to become Nick. When she played with her horses, the kind, strong stallion would suddenly become evil and try to devour the younger horses. The mother horse was always shuttling her foals from one “secret cave” to another to protect them.
I heard Mia muttering after midnight once and went in to find her combing her stuffed animals. An evil man made an oil slick on purpose, she whispered, and left them to die, so she was cleaning their fur to save them. Her horses and stuffies had as many calamities as they had tea parties.
Her nightmares had stayed behind in Chicago, but her memories apparently hadn’t. Her second-grade teacher, Sara, a gentle, perceptive woman in her forties, called us in to show us Mia’s weekly journal.
“Sometimes I feel bad when I think of certain events,” Mia wrote, “such as when my old dad did bad things to me. But all I have to do is not think about it and then I feel better.”
She assured us she’d keep Mia’s journal confidential should she want to continue writing about “certain events.” Sara and Mia forged a deep bond that soon included Paul and I. She had a calm, spiritual presence that was often an anchor for our family.
I asked Mia if she still remembered what Nick did to her. She looked at me as if I was daft.
“Of course, I do, Mama,” she said. “I just don’t remember which birthday it happened on.” Then she wagged her finger at me and scolded, “You know, Mother, you shouldn’ta got married with that man.”
How could I reply? Tell her that if I hadn’t, she wouldn’t be here? What a terrible truth for her to one day realize. The price she paid for her existence.
“He did what ?” said Judge Moran, outraged.
I had flown back to Chicago to settle a child support dispute, and my lawyer told him that Nick had remarried
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