The baby nuzzled against my neck as sleep overtook him. He sighed and relaxed in my arms. “Another one down.” I said to my daughter. She dried the dish in her hands and came into the room and lovingly looked at the bundle in my arms. “You can put him down with his brother if you want to, Mom.” I looked at her tired face and noted the dark circles under her eyes. Our eyes met for a moment, and without saying a word to each other, we knew what the other was thinking.
Time, like grains of sand on a long pebbly beach, lets the waves of our past wash the sharp edges away from the reality of our experience. What is left in its wake is something that we can walk on. The sharp edges are gone.
I am transported back into time for a long moment. I was taking a walk on a summer night to mail a letter. I turned in the moonlight and watched the reflection of the light off of our house’s roof. It illuminated our house, giving it an eery aura. For a moment, such a feeling of terror washed over me that I am frozen with fear. I wanted to run away but my legs would no longer let me move. For long minutes, I stood frozen in that same place, still watching our home. Then, as the numbing terror started to dissipate I became resolute, I can’t leave my children alone with that man. If I’m not there, who will protect them? I rub my right leg, just to get it moving again and start my short journey home.
I remember the fear I saw in my daughter’s eyes the next day as her father went in yet another rampage. She looked at him with tears streaming down her little face. My husband demanded total and complete obedience from my children and from myself. If he did not get it, the price could be very high. I asked for help in my small town, even the local sheriff, but my husband was a very personable man who had befriended most of the officials in our locality. The abuse shelter would not even help me.
I started sending money to my family for our escape. When I had enough we planned the escape. I had a car waiting and a safe place to go. But my husband heard the door shut on our way out and he caught us. He made us come back to the house of horror. But I kept planning, and one day the door swung open in such a way that even my husband could not stop it. An opening came up right here in this town for my autistic son. I made a deal with my husband. I would give him the divorce he craved if he would let us leave. He grudgingly agreed that it would be the best thing for the family. I was stunned by his consent, but in two days we were here. Our new life had begun.
Our life is like a tapestry, I am told. If you look on the back of a tapestry, you will see loose threads and the knots that had to be made so that the beautiful fabric would not unravel. Both sides are important, the ugly side and the beautiful one. We have to accept that there would be no tapestry with just one side of it. Life has to be experienced in all its intricities.
I am back in the present now, looking down at my beautiful sleeping grandson. I look up at my daughter’s face again and see the peace that has settled there.
