"All those moments will be lost in time,
like tears in rain."
['Tears in Rain monologue', Blade Runner]
Best adlib line ever.
I woke up today not knowing if I'd write or not. I'd been thinking about it for days. I had a few ideas in mind, but nothing much solid. I have been pondering a little bit lately about the nature of relationships and legacy, about how people are remembered differently according to how each person knew them, knew of them, what the nature of that relationship was. An old friend passed and... I couldn't help but think I knew different parts of him and in different ways than most others.
I suppose others who knew my mother must therefore also have very different views of her, based on those experiences. Different people who've met me or been acquainted with me must see me very different ways accordingly. People who knew me when I was younger, like those who worked with me in my 20s, probably believe in a version of me that no longer exists, my having evolved considerably over the years. But for me, whatever my vision of my mother is, it is a moment frozen in time. She's not in her 80s, but in her 50s. Which is really weird when I stop and consider I'm in my 50s.
Liza-Ann asked me about my memories of mom this morning when we woke, and I realized how much my memory has been ravaged by time. Is it age? Is it simply distance in time? Is it the effects of Covid or the stress of living through a global pandemic? Does it matter? No.
The reality is that nowadays when I think about my distant past, there are moments in time where I remember how I felt more so than the details of precisely what happened. I remember how I felt about my mother, even though I remember so little of my youth. I remember how I felt about a lot of firsts and the charged energy that comes with them. I remember a lot of tears and the feeling of emptiness that comes with the worst kinds of sorrow or disappointment. But the details... are tears in rain.
There is one memory that's been nagging at me lately, and I can feel the details slipping away, I have few left, so I decided today I'd better write it down, because I don't think I ever have, and I need it recorded somewhere. I should be glad to be rid of it, really, given its unpleasantness. But it's important, so I... require it, I guess.
This is not a morality tale, or at least not exactly, and this is not something someone else will read and come away from with a 'splinter of the mind' with the potential to shift their perspective a little. It's just a shitty little story about a shitty little thing that happened to me one day as a child. That's it. That's all.
But if you've ever struggled to understand anything about me, about what motivates me, about how I evolved into who I am, this is the biggest clue I could ever possibly provide. Some unknown, unnamed, unremembered 14 year old was the butterfly; I am the effect.
November 2nd, 1980
It was my birthday. I was turning nine. I'd successfully hidden this fact from my classmates through the morning and made it through the lunch hour, so I was feeling less anxious. All boys Catholic school meant varying forms and degrees of hazing, depending on who found out and how well liked you were, but even the best possible outcomes were far from pleasant. Ah, the joys of toxic masculinity: we'll show you how much we love you with some good ole physical abuse. Those who really love you will go easy. The bullies will use it as a hall pass to go however hard they like.
Like every lunch hour, when it ended, K-4 lined up in their classes in the basement of Holland Hall to be enumerated and then for their teachers to come retrieve them and lead them upstairs to their classrooms. This process was not overseen by the administration, but by a handful of grade nines. Fourteen-year-olds wrangling five- to nine-year-olds. It was a day like any other, save my secret.
I don't remember exactly how they figured it out. I think my birthday was within a few days of a classmate and someone realized and did a bit of quick arithmetic. However it came about, in a few terrifying seconds I was grabbed by four 'friends' for 'the bumps'. I don't rightly recall which four. I could name two. But I was stretched as if to be drawn and quartered, one on each limb, swung increasingly higher and lower and faster, bouncing off the floor hard enough it might bruise, but break. It's meant to be terrifying, not truly damaging. I was lucky, really. These were people who mostly liked me.
Before they could finish, the 'monitor' arrived. They dropped me on the floor, and chins down, sullen, marched across the room to line up by the wall where the 'bad boys' were lined up so that teachers could soon be told of their crimes and decide a suitable punishment. I got up and dusted myself off and tried to resume my position in my class line. But the monitor pointed and instructed me to join the others. I tried to resist, to explain that I was the victim here, but he was having none of it. I was made to line up with the others.
That's it. Right there. That's the wingbeat: an innocuous decision by a child just a few years older than me. I don't remember his face. I didn't know his name. But things were set in motion now. This train has no brake.
A teacher came, and again I tried to protest, but it was all deaf ears. You were against that wall. That means you were caught doing something wrong. You wouldn't be there if you hadn't been caught breaking rules. Now shut up and do as you're told. March. Upstairs. Stand outside your classroom. And no one was talking now. No talking. No listening. Just five terrified children, heads down, awaiting punishment.
Next it was an angry "Christian" Brother shouting. It was white noise. It was one of those scenes in the movie where there's no sound, just the blurry image of a frenetic character emoting and flailing their arms angrily. It was put to us as a decision. We'd been 'behaving like kindergarteners', we were told, so we had two choices: go downstairs and spend the afternoon in kindergarten, or promise never to do it again and go sit quietly in our desks for the rest of the afternoon in our own classroom. One by one, the others chose the obvious answer: admit wrongdoing, make assurances, and go sit in their usual seats.
I chose door number three.
Eyes full of tears, I explained that 'I'm going to the principal's office to explain what happened because you won't listen.' This may have been the first time in my life I attempted to 'speak truth to power' but it certainly wasn't my last. It's been an important aspect of my career, in fact. And I credit this with being where it all began: trying to stand up for myself against what I felt was an injustice.
I learned a lot that day, about the nature of fate and accidents, about authority, about justice and injustice, about cause and effect. That's not to say I'm the same now as I was at nine. I used to be a lot angrier when I was younger; I'm not now. I used to hold grudges; I seldom do now and work hard not to. I used to have a harder time forgiving people; I find it much easier now.
But there is one thing I've never forgiven, and I don't suspect I ever will.
Brother Critch looked in the tear-filled eyes of a nine-year-old boy on that child's birthday, heard him struggling to explain how he'd been treated unfairly, and then grabbed him by the two biceps, lifted him from the ground, carried him through a doorway, and stuffed the child in its assigned desk, where it would sit, stifling tears, for the rest of the afternoon.
