by Bill Cumming
Friday afternoon and evening were spent with a friend who is in the midst of a severe economic crisis. I had stopped by to deliver a few hundred dollars hopefully to insure that things would be OK until the end of the month. We stood for a moment in the living room and I sensed that something was profoundly out of sync. Tears filled her eyes as she told me her son couldn’t have anyone over because there wasn’t any toilet paper in the house; there hadn’t been for a week. There were prescriptions that couldn’t be picked up for Mother and child because there was no money. The car had been broken for more than ten days. Why hadn’t this Mom called me earlier?
Was the money I was leaving enough to get these things? No, it was just for the rent. The past ten days have been bitter cold. She had walked anywhere she had to go. Her job, caring for seniors needing assistance, had dwindled recently through no fault of her own. Her husband was working as a short order cook in a small convenience store at the end of the block. This week he spent his check on scratch tickets for the lottery. There was no deodorant, laundry soap, paper towel, shampoo, razor blades, main course supplies. The Mom was embarrassed not to have deodorant, worried that she smelled.
One in six or seven people in this country are in this condition or worse. Here is what this Dad wrote a few years ago:
From a very young age (birth to be exact), I was programmed to be a failure. See, even at birth the actions of people around me, and for that matter, the people/persons not around me, had an effect. My dad, I learned he didn’t care about me, (Why? I don’t know.) He left my mom 8 ½ months pregnant with me, and she had a dad who died a month earlier. He pushed her (my mom) down a flight of stairs and told her he was going on a fishing trip. He never came back. Heard he went to Florida to produce smut movies. “Who cares?” Right? That’s what I learned from my dad. I also learned my mom became an emotional wreck. Odd, me being a newborn and her crying more than me. She’d cry when she woke in the morning, in the afternoon, at night, whenever I’d cry and when she fed me. I think the combination of my mom’s dad dying, my dad leaving her, and the fact that she didn’t want me (Reasons being, my dad leaving her, and me not being a girl.) led us down the path we took.
She remarried shortly after. Four months later, I think. She must have felt abandoned, vulnerable, unprotected. Like I said, she had lost her dad, husband and had a newborn baby. So she clung onto anyone who took notice. It ended up being this big, fat, dirty, mean guy. I remember the guy couldn’t even clean himself completely. My mom had to get areas he couldn’t reach. I knew this cause I was made to watch. Now I didn’t remember this all from the beginning. She was with him a few years, and some of it stuck with me. But who cares, right, dad? Besides I had a new dad, and mom wasn’t crying no more. They even had a new baby, and this dad stuck around. I didn’t get this, but I learned real quick that my new sister was his real daughter and I was only my mother’s son. But he still paid attention to me. He’d scream and holler, sometimes even hit me. My mom would make him take us kids to the park. In the car he’d reach back and give me a good smack just to show he still cared. Left a bruise a couple of times to show my mom how much he cared. He told her I fell off the slide. I later learned my mom knew he was hitting me, and that when I was younger, he was performing sexual acts with me. I also learned this to be acceptable, normal. It had to be. I had a dad who showed me he hated me, and a mom who approved.
About this point I was 5 and “Uncle” Butch came along. Now “Uncle” Butch was an awesome guy. Really big and strong, made my mom laugh, took us places, and best of all, he seemed to like me. He started spending more time around, but always leaving before dad got home. Well, come to find out “Uncle” Butch wasn’t really “Uncle” Butch, but the guy mom was cheating on dad with. She became pregnant and there was a big scene between mom and dad. They hadn’t done anything in a long time for this to occur. Dad beat mom up pretty good, mom kicked dad out and Butch moved in. Dad didn’t like this and called dad outside. Dad was no match. Butch pistol whipped him, and urinated on him while he was down. Dad was never seen again, and Butch was the new dad. This is where my real learning and programming began.
See Butch was a successful convict. He was into insurance scams, and burglaries. He was good at it, too. I remember coming home from school and seeing VCRs and stereos stacked from floor to the ceiling. Looking on my parent’s bed and seeing jewelery and cash covering the blanket. It was so cool, I wanted to be just like him. He had so many friends. These friends would come over and drink and smoke marijuana. Do other drugs I wasn’t allowed to see. They’d all laugh and have fun until everyone went home and then dad would become real mean to mom. I’d sneak out of my bed and listen at their door. I’d hear him hitting her and her crying for him to stop. I was so scared, sometimes I’d wet myself. So scared, I didn’t dare help her. Remember, I said he was big and strong, and he had hit me once already. Punched me in my chest. Hurt pretty bad, too. So, I’d go back to bed, wet pajamas and all and cry myself to sleep, real softly mind you. Dad had a rule. Men don’t cry. And if you were caught crying, you got something to cry about. But this was all normal and besides, “who cares,” right, dad. Getting hit became a normal part of life for me shortly after that. Not saying that I didn’t deserve some of it. I was out doing some of what I learned. Let’s see, I was hitting my sisters, fighting in school, stealing, drinking and smoking a pack of butts a day by the time I was 7.
At age 9 I was sent to a boys’ home. My mom had abandoned me. Visits and phone calls became less, home furloughs were taken away because my dad had shot himself with a rifle while I was in front of him. I started to really hate my mother. Not only for the abandonment but for not caring what went on with her son in the boys’ home. The physical abuse, mental and sexual. We had it all. Details really not really needed. I ended up getting kicked out of the boys’ home shortly after twelve. They only harbor children up until they turn twelve. I got to stay a little longer. My case was special. It wasn’t that I wasn’t ready to go home, I was. I completed everything they had to help me. Including fornication with staff. It was the home that wasn’t ready for me. Reluctantly, the state allowed me to go home. Six months later I was admitted to Jackson Brook because of a suicide attempt. It wasn’t a suicide attempt, it was a stupid dare with classmates on a fieldtrip. It was an excuse for my mother to get rid of me because my dad didn’t want me around. I don’t know why! I was turning out just like him. Maybe it was I messed up the balance. My mom had my sister from her previous marriage as her favorite, and my dad had his daughter from this marriage as his favorite, and my real dad, well, he just didn’t care. So they got their happy family, and I’m in the nuthouse getting EKGs and shots of valium up the butt in the padded room so they could figure out what was wrong with me. I wasn’t crazy, I was confused, mad, and maybe a little scared. Though I wouldn’t admit to that one. I don’t need wires on my head or drugs in my system to figure out what’s wrong. I just need someone to listen. No one does. I was released, no conclusions on my mental stability. No shit! Nobody listened. Put these blocks together, what do you see in the picture? Who’s the President? Always these questions, but no one hearing.
I went home one more time. Actually hung out for awhile. Went back to school and got a part-time job working with my dad, who was a manager at a fish plant on the wharf. He took the job with an ulterior motive. He planned a faked back injury and collected insurance money. I got fired. Guilty by association. Was still in school, but no job. With no job came no money. I was still too young for a job permit, and I liked money. So I took my few life skills I had learned and set out to make money. I wasn’t good at acting, so I opted for burglaries. Shortly after fourteen, I left home (tired of the bullshit) and continued my career. My career was halted within 6 months when I was caught for a house burglary, and a chain of car burglaries. Spent 90 credits or roughly 9 months in the Youth Center. Was released and continued my path of self-failure. In and out of the Youth Center two more times, graduated to the county (Cumberland County Jail) and finally prison (Maine State). Two trips there wasn’t enough. It took the third (Worst and best by far). I got a seven and a half year sentence for burglary. Got a girlfriend of two years, three months pregnant with my son. I was twenty-six and had left a path of chaos behind me. I’d set out to be a failure and succeeded. None of the blame was mine, mind you, but something was definitely wrong and I knew it.
Imagine for a moment that this is your story and see what “makes sense” to you. The effects of growing up without a groundedness in Loving-Kindness and the power of choice are long lasting and pervasive. The cost in human suffering and the economic implications for us all are devastating. Buying lottery tickets is not a wise solution. If you do not experience that a solution is possible, reasoning does not matter.
In this holiday season may we strive to be awake, to be loving without end, to be aware and to contribute what you can, not what is comfortable, but what may make the difference for you and for those whose lives we touch.
