Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Phonics and Relationships
Our relationship with Eyvonne is complex, but then nothing about our life is simple. Most people assume we’re lesbians. Outward appearances would seem to support that supposition. If people are comfortable with us as an ‘alternative lifestyle couple’ we usually clue them in, but we’re not driven to explain. Once they know they usually have a lot of questions.
The most common question, after an appraising look at whichever Q alter is up: “So you’re really a guy huh?”
Gwen loves fielding that one. “No, I personally am not a guy. But at least six of us in here are.” If the question comes from a woman she leans toward them batting her eyelashes and acting all flirty. You can practically see them wondering about the lesbian thing again.
Eyvonne has a gift for pre-loving us. She first loved eliot. She tried really hard not to fall in love with me too.
“You’re a really fun guy Shel, but you’re a kid,” she said. “I love you but not like that.”
I definitely loved her ‘like that’. I was severely jealous of el. But I had to admit his feelings for her were kind of amazing. It was like watching Data on Star Trek have his emotion chip activated. Lillie and I agreed it was el’s moment. He’d been lost a long time, buried deep inside.
I toy with the idea of making an animated feature length film about it. “Finding el.” Even though he wasn’t an adorable yellow clownfish Eyvonne certainly did find him. And she set him free. By doing so she set in motion a series of interactions that ended up setting us all free.
Once el allowed himself to feel things there was no going back. Short term it messed up our work ethic pretty bad. But I realized I could keep track of things, get us where we needed to be, make sure projects were completed. In other words I started growing up and taking responsibility for things.
As I grew up I stopped being so jealous of el. I realized Eyvonne loved me too. She loves us all, even Qs who’ve not been spawned yet or who lurk around, not ready to come into the system yet. She loves them the way a mother loves her yet unconceived children. It’s truly unconditional love. Which is a good thing because if I had to earn her love I’d be doomed.
The whole thing about our sexual orientation is tied to some of our earliest cognitive memories. Our father made sure Baby knew she was the wrong sex. He would rather she’d been a boy. To him a boy had intrinsic value, a mind worth educating, a life worth living, power. Still when he bounced Baby aloft haloed in sunlight she was special, a golden child. His favorite. Chosen.
It was basic sexist stuff. Men are strong. Women are weak. In order to combat the early repeated sexual abuse we needed to be strong. Tada! I was born to serve as Baby and Lillie’s defender. Soon eliot entered the picture. Our existence didn’t stop the abuse but it gave us strategies for dealing with it.
We learned to hide because “acting like a boy” earned beatings from our mother. Mom’s rage at what others dismissed as tomboyishness was an ever-present risk. I absorbed blows for Lillie, for el, but most of all for Baby.
Each aching bruise underscored the importance of silence. Every slap drove the message deeper. Like other more profound pain, we chose to ignore it. It became a matter of pride; never needing Novocain at the dentist; being stoic as the doctor administered a shot. Mom watched from across the room nodding approval as I denied pain.
“She’s a strong child,” she said proudly. “Never whimpers.”
Never when anyone could hear.
Our childhood secrets remained buried deep within until middle age. We remembered a nearly perfect childhood marred only by my mother’s chronic illness. When my sister and I talked about growing up she was bewildered.
“We were raised in different families or what?” she commented. She was six years old when I was born. Until I was nearly four I thought she was my mother. She was my primary caregiver until I started school. Throughout my childhood she did much of the cooking and cleaning for our family. It didn’t seem unusual, but what did I have to compare it to?
Our father was the pampered only child of extremely wealthy people who lost their fortune in the depression. When the dust settled they were still wealthier than most people but counted themselves impoverished. Born into wealth and power, our father had neither in adulthood. A self-trained research scientist with no college degree, his income was far less than his colleagues even though he developed 11 patents enriching his employer a major chemical firm.
When I was very young Dad started a business long before its time, purifying used oils. The fledgling recycling operation failed when the company’s treasurer accused him of embezzling $10,000. Our father was court-ordered to make restitution. Later the man went through some sort of religious experience. He came to our home to confess he’d stolen the money using his position as treasurer to make it appear it Dad was the thief. My father hit him. I remember the man cartwheeling over our porch railing to the ground in slow motion. Nothing changed. We were still impoverished by the court ruling. The true thief bought a new house while our father worked two jobs and burned with resentment.
He resented his disabled wife. He resented having so many children. Baby was his fifth. The first was stillborn. By age three Baby was painfully introverted, peeking at strangers only from behind Mom’s skirts or Dad’s knees. We assumed life for all small children alternated between love and resentment. Small children accept any circumstance without question. They have no way to compare, no language to describe, no one to tell.
What would have made sense to my friend George our garbage collector? He was a middle aged Black man who took the time to sit on our back steps with me a few minutes every Wednesday until I started school. He asked my opinion about the weather, wondered how my dog was doing, or noted my sister’s cat had a litter of kittens. I seldom responded but I basked in his caring. To his credit my earliest vocational choice was to be a Black garbage collector.
Could I have left a note for our milkman Dugan who carefully placed glass bottles of milk, cream floating on top, in a little insulated metal box on our front porch twice a week? Sometimes he knocked on our door and handed my mother a bill printed in red ink. He seemed embarrassed to tell her she had to make a payment or there would be no more milk. She would shut the door and gather coins from all over the house while he waited patiently on the stoop. When he left she retreated to her bedroom shutting the door against the world. That included me. I was left to my own devices, a three-year-old suddenly free to explore the universe. I stood on tiptoes to turn the doorknob and escaped to curl up with our dog in the cool space dug into the earth beneath his doghouse or to hide among the hens in the chicken house. Safe havens.
None of the adults who flitted in and out of my life were concerned that I was practically mute and seldom met anyone’s gaze. My kindergarten teacher was an older woman who yelled a lot. She didn’t encourage personal revelation. If you spoke out of turn it was ‘head down’ for you, your face buried in folded arms on your desk. At least it wasn’t heads off. She reminded me of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland. I spent most of my first year of school worrying about that.
It was a good thing I already knew how to read, since I was mostly occupied by keeping a wary eye on the myriads of new adults connected with this school thing.
One of the cool things about my kidhood was our father reading the Sunday funnies to all four of his children. Being the youngest I was relegated to the least favored spot, across from him, looking down on the funny pages. I learned to read upside down. My parents both read incessantly. Our Mom read aloud to us every day. It didn’t matter what she was reading or if we understood it. We loved the words. We spent a lot of time in the children’s room of the library while our parents selected books. Seated on the floor under one of those munchkin tables eliot experienced an epiphany. He was reading a book about a circus to Lillie and baby and I. I can still see the colorful pictures of lions and clowns. el would read a page, turn the book right side up so we could see the pictures, then turn it upside down so he could read the words.
Suddenly he hesitated. The words coalesced under the pictures and he stopped turning the book over to read. We were four. It opened up a whole new universe to us. We spent long hours every night thereafter reading in bed by flashlight under the tent of our covers. In kindergarten we were reading sentences faster than other kids sounded out words. In grade school we took a book every day, leaving it open on our lap to save our sanity as teachers droned on in the classroom. By middle school we’d stopped reading individual sentences and graduated to paragraphs. In high school we could read all but the most complex stuff by the page.
Remember the Star Trek episode where this one crewman becomes godlike? They demonstrated his growing abilities by showing him reading at an ever-faster pace. It would have gone better for him if he’d been smart enough to hide his abilities like we did. In first grade we imitated other kids sounding out new words. We actually did struggle with phonics. It made no sense given our established reading style. Troubles with phonics kept us believable. When our own kids struggled with phonics homework we couldn’t help. None of us can grasp it to this day. © 2004 M. S. Eliot
The most common question, after an appraising look at whichever Q alter is up: “So you’re really a guy huh?”
Gwen loves fielding that one. “No, I personally am not a guy. But at least six of us in here are.” If the question comes from a woman she leans toward them batting her eyelashes and acting all flirty. You can practically see them wondering about the lesbian thing again.
Eyvonne has a gift for pre-loving us. She first loved eliot. She tried really hard not to fall in love with me too.
“You’re a really fun guy Shel, but you’re a kid,” she said. “I love you but not like that.”
I definitely loved her ‘like that’. I was severely jealous of el. But I had to admit his feelings for her were kind of amazing. It was like watching Data on Star Trek have his emotion chip activated. Lillie and I agreed it was el’s moment. He’d been lost a long time, buried deep inside.
I toy with the idea of making an animated feature length film about it. “Finding el.” Even though he wasn’t an adorable yellow clownfish Eyvonne certainly did find him. And she set him free. By doing so she set in motion a series of interactions that ended up setting us all free.
Once el allowed himself to feel things there was no going back. Short term it messed up our work ethic pretty bad. But I realized I could keep track of things, get us where we needed to be, make sure projects were completed. In other words I started growing up and taking responsibility for things.
As I grew up I stopped being so jealous of el. I realized Eyvonne loved me too. She loves us all, even Qs who’ve not been spawned yet or who lurk around, not ready to come into the system yet. She loves them the way a mother loves her yet unconceived children. It’s truly unconditional love. Which is a good thing because if I had to earn her love I’d be doomed.
The whole thing about our sexual orientation is tied to some of our earliest cognitive memories. Our father made sure Baby knew she was the wrong sex. He would rather she’d been a boy. To him a boy had intrinsic value, a mind worth educating, a life worth living, power. Still when he bounced Baby aloft haloed in sunlight she was special, a golden child. His favorite. Chosen.
It was basic sexist stuff. Men are strong. Women are weak. In order to combat the early repeated sexual abuse we needed to be strong. Tada! I was born to serve as Baby and Lillie’s defender. Soon eliot entered the picture. Our existence didn’t stop the abuse but it gave us strategies for dealing with it.
We learned to hide because “acting like a boy” earned beatings from our mother. Mom’s rage at what others dismissed as tomboyishness was an ever-present risk. I absorbed blows for Lillie, for el, but most of all for Baby.
Each aching bruise underscored the importance of silence. Every slap drove the message deeper. Like other more profound pain, we chose to ignore it. It became a matter of pride; never needing Novocain at the dentist; being stoic as the doctor administered a shot. Mom watched from across the room nodding approval as I denied pain.
“She’s a strong child,” she said proudly. “Never whimpers.”
Never when anyone could hear.
Our childhood secrets remained buried deep within until middle age. We remembered a nearly perfect childhood marred only by my mother’s chronic illness. When my sister and I talked about growing up she was bewildered.
“We were raised in different families or what?” she commented. She was six years old when I was born. Until I was nearly four I thought she was my mother. She was my primary caregiver until I started school. Throughout my childhood she did much of the cooking and cleaning for our family. It didn’t seem unusual, but what did I have to compare it to?
Our father was the pampered only child of extremely wealthy people who lost their fortune in the depression. When the dust settled they were still wealthier than most people but counted themselves impoverished. Born into wealth and power, our father had neither in adulthood. A self-trained research scientist with no college degree, his income was far less than his colleagues even though he developed 11 patents enriching his employer a major chemical firm.
When I was very young Dad started a business long before its time, purifying used oils. The fledgling recycling operation failed when the company’s treasurer accused him of embezzling $10,000. Our father was court-ordered to make restitution. Later the man went through some sort of religious experience. He came to our home to confess he’d stolen the money using his position as treasurer to make it appear it Dad was the thief. My father hit him. I remember the man cartwheeling over our porch railing to the ground in slow motion. Nothing changed. We were still impoverished by the court ruling. The true thief bought a new house while our father worked two jobs and burned with resentment.
He resented his disabled wife. He resented having so many children. Baby was his fifth. The first was stillborn. By age three Baby was painfully introverted, peeking at strangers only from behind Mom’s skirts or Dad’s knees. We assumed life for all small children alternated between love and resentment. Small children accept any circumstance without question. They have no way to compare, no language to describe, no one to tell.
What would have made sense to my friend George our garbage collector? He was a middle aged Black man who took the time to sit on our back steps with me a few minutes every Wednesday until I started school. He asked my opinion about the weather, wondered how my dog was doing, or noted my sister’s cat had a litter of kittens. I seldom responded but I basked in his caring. To his credit my earliest vocational choice was to be a Black garbage collector.
Could I have left a note for our milkman Dugan who carefully placed glass bottles of milk, cream floating on top, in a little insulated metal box on our front porch twice a week? Sometimes he knocked on our door and handed my mother a bill printed in red ink. He seemed embarrassed to tell her she had to make a payment or there would be no more milk. She would shut the door and gather coins from all over the house while he waited patiently on the stoop. When he left she retreated to her bedroom shutting the door against the world. That included me. I was left to my own devices, a three-year-old suddenly free to explore the universe. I stood on tiptoes to turn the doorknob and escaped to curl up with our dog in the cool space dug into the earth beneath his doghouse or to hide among the hens in the chicken house. Safe havens.
None of the adults who flitted in and out of my life were concerned that I was practically mute and seldom met anyone’s gaze. My kindergarten teacher was an older woman who yelled a lot. She didn’t encourage personal revelation. If you spoke out of turn it was ‘head down’ for you, your face buried in folded arms on your desk. At least it wasn’t heads off. She reminded me of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland. I spent most of my first year of school worrying about that.
It was a good thing I already knew how to read, since I was mostly occupied by keeping a wary eye on the myriads of new adults connected with this school thing.
One of the cool things about my kidhood was our father reading the Sunday funnies to all four of his children. Being the youngest I was relegated to the least favored spot, across from him, looking down on the funny pages. I learned to read upside down. My parents both read incessantly. Our Mom read aloud to us every day. It didn’t matter what she was reading or if we understood it. We loved the words. We spent a lot of time in the children’s room of the library while our parents selected books. Seated on the floor under one of those munchkin tables eliot experienced an epiphany. He was reading a book about a circus to Lillie and baby and I. I can still see the colorful pictures of lions and clowns. el would read a page, turn the book right side up so we could see the pictures, then turn it upside down so he could read the words.
Suddenly he hesitated. The words coalesced under the pictures and he stopped turning the book over to read. We were four. It opened up a whole new universe to us. We spent long hours every night thereafter reading in bed by flashlight under the tent of our covers. In kindergarten we were reading sentences faster than other kids sounded out words. In grade school we took a book every day, leaving it open on our lap to save our sanity as teachers droned on in the classroom. By middle school we’d stopped reading individual sentences and graduated to paragraphs. In high school we could read all but the most complex stuff by the page.
Remember the Star Trek episode where this one crewman becomes godlike? They demonstrated his growing abilities by showing him reading at an ever-faster pace. It would have gone better for him if he’d been smart enough to hide his abilities like we did. In first grade we imitated other kids sounding out new words. We actually did struggle with phonics. It made no sense given our established reading style. Troubles with phonics kept us believable. When our own kids struggled with phonics homework we couldn’t help. None of us can grasp it to this day. © 2004 M. S. Eliot
