ÿþ<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:st1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"> <head> <meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <meta name=ProgId content=Word.Document> <meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 10"> <meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 10"> <link rel=File-List href="05%20abbr%20story%20of%20my%20early%20lifeREVISED_files/filelist.xml"> <title>Trust your children</title> <!-- <o:SmartTagType namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="date"/> <o:SmartTagType namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="place"/> <o:SmartTagType namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="City"/> <o:SmartTagType namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="State"/> --> <style> p class {font sytle : normal; font-weight : normal; font-size: 16pt; } </style> </head> <body lang=EN-US style='tab-interval:.5in'> <div class=Section1> <table align="center" width="75%"> <tr> <td> <a HREF="index.html">Return to Suemap Home Page</a><br--> <p align=center style='text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight: normal'>An abbreviated story of my early life. </b></b></b>© Susan Peter <st1:date Year="2005" Day="22" Month="9">9-22-05</st1:date><o:p></o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Once upon a time there was a happy family with a mom and a dad and some kids and they all loved each other and expressed that love in happy and warm ways that left everyone confident they were loved and valued  just because. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Somewhere this family exists, but it didn t in my childhood.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>When a child told a parent something was wrong, but couldn t come up with the exact words, they were punished. They could have been encouraged to find the words, or they could have been believed,  just because without needing to produce details, confirmations, or reasons.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>If they said  no, I don t want to go visit that person , that would have been all that was needed. In time the child would have been able to tell enough of the story to save herself, her two sisters, her brother, her cousin s children, and countless other victims we were not related to.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Trust your children; listen to your children. It won t solve all problems; it won t necessarily save them from abuse. But it may save them from a much larger tragedy.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The Man and Woman started their life together with pre-existing problems. This is the story of all life. None of us is perfect. We try to solve our problems by finding someone to love -- someone who will love us in spite of our pre-existing problems.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>His pre-existing problem include a difficult childhood: his mother had been abandoned by her husband. Now headed by a single parent, the family was naturally poor, even though she was employed. Because she was employed and because this was a long time ago (1910 s and 20 s), she paid other families to care for him and his twin brother for most of his childhood. Think of it as foster homes. By the time he was 30-something, he had a gambling addiction, and other legal problems inherited from his irregular youth.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The woman had a more stable home life as a child only in the sense that her parents and siblings remained together as they moved frequently, always trying to rise above poverty. As a young adult she went to a religious college, trained for a life of religious service. She expected to find financial stability here, but later, because she was female, she was rudely forced out of this religious organization. This caused her to question her faith and modis operandi to achieve financial stability. As she approached her late 20 s she became desperate. In this era (1930 s), this stability could only be achieved through marriage. Her own mother had been an old maid of 30 before she snagged a man, and the younger woman was never allowed to forget the march of time.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The man had two girl fiends and felt no great compulsion to marry, until one of the women told him she was pregnant. They married. This was 1942. Eight months later they had a baby girl. One month after that, they heard that the rejected girlfriend, who had gone home to live with her parents, had committed suicide. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The luckier woman, now the wife, saw her husband fall in love with his baby daughter. Already insecure with her husband s love, she now became jealous of the affection he felt for the baby; the mother-daughter bonding that might have happened under better circumstances, failed.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Two and half years later a boy was born, then another year and half later, a second daughter (myself). Sometimes they were all happy. Sometimes they all had enough food. Eventually they build themselves a house in a rural (cheap) area. The land had been paid for before their marriage, and these first few years they lived in an old chicken house; dragged to the site to be a temporary home, they called it the Shack. Fearing the homelessness each had experienced as children in the 1920 s and 30 s they had built their two-story, three-bedroom house their own hands, buying lumber as they had the cash to do so and never borrowing money.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The father always hoped to provide better for his family than his parents had for him, and the way gamblers do, he dreamed big. Many mistakes were made. Who knows now? A poor rural family with three children: the dad is underemployed and tries to supplement his income by gambling; the mom stays home to care for her children, scraping together what she can to survive. The mom tries to keep everyone together, functioning as a family; she takes the children to the gambling houses where the card games go on until the wee hours of the morning; she is trying to entice her husband home. In spite of both Mom and Dad working as hard as they are capable, striving to create the best home they can for their family, the challenges are insurmountable. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The parents come from backgrounds that do not include physical or verbal affection. No  I love you s. No hugging. Good night kisses on the cheek were allowed. No one should accuse them of being mean-spirited. Born of Victorian-era parents, they simply hadn t experienced this kind of affection as children, and with the financial stresses they are under, their children become another stress. Not as bad as a  burden necessarily, but not treated as miraculous and adored blessings. At best, the children have each other. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>So when The Problem with the Uncle began this family was not tied together with the strong bond that can exist under more ideal circumstances. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>In the late 1940 s a handsome uncle did a bad thing. (He will henceforth be known as The Bad Uncle.) Instead of the child telling her parents about the bad thing, she was silent. There were no known words for what he had done, and he told her if she ever told her parents he would kill her. She must never tell anyone. It was their secret. Since there was no ground-work of trust and affection between the child and her parents, as even Bad Uncle could see, she had no one to tell, even if she had had the vocabulary to do so. Her life had been threatened and there was no one she could trust to tell. No one who could protect her. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>But it was worse than the bad, unspeakable thing he did; now she had a secret from her parents. So while the child was only a toddler, the fragile family bonds were damaged further. Bad Uncle created many opportunities to do the bad thing to the toddler, and took every one of them. His wife, the Aunt who was sister to the Mom, saw his attentions given to the little girl and added her own: grooming the child s hair, clothes, and fingernails. Was she ignorant of her husband s activities? Maybe innocent of aiding and abetting a criminal act? Who knows?</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Some time after this Bad Uncle visited his attentions on the younger sister with the same results. A two year old is too young to understand what it means when an adult man puts his hands inside her panties, or shows her the magic of his private parts. But some messages she can understand: lie to your parents, listen silently to their worried calls as they search for you, stand still and pretend you do not hear. To do otherwise will cause them incredible pain,  If your parents find out they won t love you anymore. He says. Silence.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The baby boy was so attractive he won the beautiful baby contest. Did Bad Uncle visit his perverted attentions onto this toddler also? Maybe. We will probably never know. But we have  circumstantial evidence that strongly implicates him.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Not surprisingly the family s financial circumstances continued downhill. After a four year gap, the mother got pregnant again. In spite of violent arguments with her parents about her carelessness, she moved back into their home with her 3 small children. Unfortunately their home was next door to Bad Uncle and Helpful Aunt.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Some months later the mother and four children returned to her simple rural house to resume their  normal life. But this still includes frequent visits with the Bad Uncle. And every single holiday or birthday the family goes to their house. Aunt and Uncle virtually never come to our house in the country. It is too far away, and too humble for them.  How can it be farther for them to come to us, than it is for us to go to them? middle sister wonders. No doubt Bad Uncle prefers it this way; it is easier for him. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The children keep their silence, even with each other. No one talks about nothing. Ever.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The father s jobs come and go with the seasons. The mother has steady jobs cleaning houses, but it is part time work at low pay. It is 1955; the children are aged 4, 8, 10, 12 and the younger ones sometimes accompany their mother to her jobs. There are angry arguments late at night between the mother and the father. They have declared bankruptcy twice in three years.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>As they had done earlier in their marriage, they again make a temporary move hundreds of miles to find better jobs. This time they leave the 4 growing children with a family who is paid to take care of them. No child should ever be placed in this situation. The previous lack of physical and verbal affection is now replaced by no emotional support at all. No kind word, ever. But plenty of cruel words and harsh rules for the older children. The younger ones learn to be invisible.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span></p> <p class=MsoNormal>After a season passes the children are fetched and taken to the promised land, again. It is a warm place, but the other children in the schools are cold. There are no friends to be had. The children, as always, have only each other. The parent s jobs end. The family returns to its rural home far far away. It is good to be home again. Except for the proximity of the Bad Uncle. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>But now the mom is pregnant again. It has been five years since her last, and the relatives openly express distain. The four children are torn. A new baby? This is good. Another child to share with? To share what with? There is nothing to share. This is not good and the lean years begin. Food stamps do not exist. Welfare is not something we get. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The neighbors send over food for us. The heating oil is too expensive, the electricity gets turned off. The finance company loan sharks who defame the meaning of  beneficial, call, and call, and call. They want to know when our father will be home. We truly do not know. He is rarely home, and never at any  expected time. We don t answer the phone anymore. This makes life difficult when we need to call home from school or a Girl Scout meeting, or a friend s house. It is something too complicated to explain to other people. Yes, now our house has a mortgage. It is not really ours anymore. At home we have  finance company drills. Each of us children is assigned a particular family valuable to take into the woods to hide, should they come here to take what little we have away from us. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Our semi-regular visits to the Bad Uncle s house continue. They have a television. They have more food than we can consume though we try earnestly to stuff a week s worth in anytime we are there. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>In spite of this, Big Sister doesn t want to come. She tells our mother, but mother wants to know why. There is no answer to this. She is old enough to babysit the many little children who live next door, but she still doesn t have the words to explain about Bad Uncle. She is old enough to understand that she can tell on him, but mother shows no patience to listen. The child is willful and obstinate! She will not be allowed to be rude to her relatives; she will go.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>In a desperate move, she runs next door to tell the neighbor woman. To tell the neighbor woman that she <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>needs</i> to baby-sit for her tonight. The girl reminds the woman that she and her husband always go out on Saturday night, and that they will need her to baby-sit.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Yes.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The mother sees through this ploy. This difficult, willful child, always contrary since the day she was born, is trying to evade the visit to Aunt and Uncle s house. In anger, mother tells her she will NOT baby-sit for the neighbors tonight.  You will not use this to insult my sister and her family. Go back and tell her you can t.  </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Big Sister goes, but returns with a compromise arrangement. Later today the neighbor will drive the 40 mile round trip to come pick up Big Sister at Uncle s house in time for her to baby-sit tonight. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Acceptable. We depart for Bad Uncle s house.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The neighbor arrives before dinnertime, Big Sister, rescued, leaves with her. Ten minutes and two miles away, in heavy lakeshore traffic there is a small accident. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>No damage done to the police car that lost control and struck them from behind, and only minor damage to the neighbor s car: her 1950 s metal dashboard has a dent in it. Several small dents actually. Interesting name: dent. The neighbor s husband is a dentist. Dent. Dentals. Yes, they are dentals. Dental dents. Little dents where Big Sisters teeth met the metal and broke off. A bloody mess; an ambulance takes her to a hospital and she is stitched up. The several teeth, broken roots and all, of no value in the 1950 s, are tossed.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Fortunately the city has insurance and after a year or more the insurance company awards not only the medical expenses, it will pay a token toward future dentures and also a sum for pain and suffering. All together it will be almost $3000. Together Mom and Dad study the options of what to do when the check arrives. She likes to write; they decide to buy her a portable typewriter. She likes to sew; they let her help pick out her very own sewing machine. There is so much money here she gets to buy one built into its own small cabinet. With its own chair!  She is so lucky!  No, our parents remind us.  She has suffered and this is small compensation for the loss of her teeth. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Did I say the dad is a gambler? The pain and suffering is now, the typewriter and sewing machine should also be now. He buys them both. Where did he get the money? I do not know because there is barely money for food, but a promise is a promise. And we love having the new sewing machine. Now, with mother s old black Singer, two of us can be sewing at the same time. Making clothes is one of the things we do, and do well. It is the only way any of us get clothing that isn t leftover from a church rummage sale.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>In the meantime Bad Uncle and Helpful Aunt have had difficulties. After losing a job, and almost his life, for drunk driving, Bad Uncle has a job opportunity in <st1:City><st1:place>BOSTON</st1:place></st1:City>! They move. <st1:City><st1:place>Boston</st1:place></st1:City> is a long ways away. I remember being very happy with this development.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Finally, months and months later, the insurance check arrives. Dad deposits it. And writes checks of his own to pay off outstanding bills, to buy groceries. This was a mistake. Even when you are hungry, you need to wait until the deposited check clears and that money is actually in your account.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The insurance company check doesn t clear. So Dad s checks don t either. The insurance company s bounced check may not have been a serious problem for them, but for my dad it is a different story: my dad has a past. This past may have included playing poker with the county sheriff in an illegal high-stakes card game. For sure it included spending time in prison, though none of us kids knew it then. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>(Actually this is a wild-ass guess based on an experience I had with my mother in 1986: I took my mother to visit an old woman, once upon a time my father s girlfriend, later a friend of both of theirs. I sat across a small room from them as they visited for the first time in 50 years and heard her ask my mother, how did Fred do after he got out of <st1:City><st1:place>Walla Walla</st1:place></st1:City>? [<st1:City><st1:place>Walla Walla</st1:place></st1:City> is the location of a Washington State Penitentiary.]<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>My mother s response was to quickly lift a newspaper from a stack nearby, open and draw it up in front of her, lean toward the woman as she covered both of their faces with it, and whisper  sh sh, the children don t know anything about that. )</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Now the Sheriff s deputies come to our house. They have a warrant for his arrest. It is <st1:date Month="6" Day="3" Year="1958">June 3, 1958</st1:date>. He is not at home.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>A birthday party scheduled for the next day is mine. I am eleven. My mother takes me and 3 friends to our swimming spot. At the end of a dirt road is a wooden dock next to the only public access of a nearby lake. The  beach here is the gravel boat ramp. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Later in the afternoon after I say goodbye to my friends, we each pack up a box of clothes and our favorite possessions. It will be quite a while before we return says our mom. She didn t lie about that exactly. And I know she hoped it would be true, though I also know she hated living there in that cold house where all the dreams were dead.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>We drove toward the warm place again. A thousand miles from our starting point, our father came to meet us. He stood on a busy street corner where US Highway 101 passed through downtown <st1:City><st1:place>Santa Rosa</st1:place></st1:City>. Knowing we would be coming this way, he watched for us, flagging us down when he spotted our old car in the slow thick traffic. Joy all around when the gambler s bet is successful. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>In SF we went to the flop house hotel he d been living in. One dollar a night buys a cheap room with a bath down the hall, but we had to be very quiet; they had rented the room to him alone, not his wife and 5 children. We lived in a few different flats that summer, in very poor neighborhoods under various aliases. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>We moved to SB, living in a cheap hotel near the beach for a week until our parents could rent a house, way out in the cheap countryside among the orange groves, but also next to a little Spanish Mission Style elementary school.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>Our father returns to SF to work. Our mother gets a job at a hamburger stand. Later a second job to go with it. Later a job at the city s newpaper. While our father is in SF, she goes to visit him on a weekend. Later she is gone for a week. Big Sister stays home from school that week to take care of The Kid, child number 5. Big Brother gets sick, is treated by a quack and almost dies. Spends a month recovering in the hospital. This hospital bill, the long distance phone bills, and more are never paid. Big Sister goes home on the train hoping to get the neighbor dentist (remember him?) to make her a new plate of teeth for her growing mouth. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Three months later we move back to SF and attend school in those giant multi-storied brick institutions that big cities are stuck with. We stayed there a few weeks, living conveniently next to a milk processing plant where reject packages of dairy products could be retrieved from a box just within a side door, and not far from a huge bakery and brewery where old and mis-packaged bread could be had cheap.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Things got worse, but moving wasn t too difficult. We had no furniture (and no, we didn t rent furnished houses, we just did without), few clothes or other possessions. We headed further south, skipping over LA this time. The destination turned out to be <st1:place>Lemon Grove</st1:place>, a suburb of SD. This is actually even better than LA, if you enjoy perversions. It turns out we land at Bad Uncle and Helpful Aunt s home. They no longer live in <st1:City><st1:place>Boston</st1:place></st1:City>. Now we live with them. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>In a matter of days mom and dad have an apartment some miles away. It is next door to the elementary school! This is my 4<sup>th</sup> school in six months. We go back to using our real names, but can t get our school records transferred from the previous <st1:State><st1:place>California</st1:place></st1:State> schools. And because no one at home can know where we have gone to, our school records from previous years are also not transferred. Big Sister is in high school and this is hard for her. Big Brother in 8<sup>th</sup> grade says he doesn t care. I just want to go home, but it is no longer our home in any way. Our mother s week-long absence in SB was so she could go home and empty our house so someone else could buy it and move in. There is no equity for my parents. Our things were tossed into boxes and placed in storage where they will stay for 10 years.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>We moved again, and again, and again, but for these next four years almost all the moves were within the same city and same schools. Sometimes the moves were a step up, but in the end, we were back in the same apartment building we started at four years earlier. Bad Uncle and Helpful Aunt remained part of our lives. We endured holidays at their home, swam in their backyard pool designed to entice neighbor children into his clutches. We evaded when we could. When Big Sister was old enough for a boyfriend she told him about Bad Uncle and received the encouragement she needed to fight back and stop his hands. In the meantime, I received more of his attention, and of course so did our little sister. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The one move in these four years that was not within the city of <st1:City><st1:place>CV</st1:place></st1:City> was when our mother gave up trying to keep us together. Little Sister was sent to LB to live with our mother s younger brother, and us three older kids were sent live with Bad Uncle about a dozen miles away. Our mother kept  The Kid with her in a tiny trailer in CV, barely 10 feet long. She drove to LG to pick us up and take us to CV schools every day, then turning back around, she drove herself to work in SD. She reversed this convoluted loop each evening after we d spent our afternoons in the CV public library, taking us back to Aunt and Uncle s home before picking up The Kid at day care and then returning to her tiny trailer. This only lasted a few months. When school got out in June she found a slightly larger travel trailer in CV for the six of us to live in. Our father as usual lived elsewhere. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Within months the SD county authorities knew we were living in CV and came around to our home and our schools asking about him, trying to find him. I wonder how they knew? Could it be that Bad Uncle told them? It would have been one way to keep us unprotected and powerless. Our father could not remain employed long in any one place. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Early on in CV, before they found us, we lived in a rented a house with a garage. While there we economized by rebuilding the engine to our Buick. Each of us kids were expected to spend some time scouring the piston shafts with steel wool. This was at one of the better times and the house had a large varied orchard in the yard and even a Cecil Brunner rosebush against the back wall. But even when we lived here, Bad Uncle was able to take me to their home for the weekend to visit my cousins. Did I even want to go? It didn t matter. I knew it was an offer I wouldn t be allowed to refuse. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>I remember one time being in their living room watching Saturday Night at the Movies. Dr Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. The sofa made into a bed and we all sat/lay there under blankets watching the movie. His hand reached under Helpful Aunt to get to me. I had thought I was far enough away to be safe. Later his arm reached over her as he put his hand in my panties and between my legs. I exited the sofa bed to go to the bathroom. I didn t know what to do. Returning to the living room I sat on the cold floor. Helpful Aunt insisted that I get back into the bed. She even made sure I would be lying between she and him, so he wouldn t have to reach past her to get to me apparently. I escaped to the bathroom multiple times during that never-ending movie, but always was forced back into the bed in one position or another, and he persisted.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>There was never any possibility of telling on Bad Uncle. My father wasn t available to save me and it would have cost his freedom had he tried. It would have been selfish of me and inappropriate to even tell him. To tell my mother would have been more than I could bear. I didn t want her to prove what I suspected; that she would not do anything to stop her sister s husband. By the time I was 13 I realized I could forcefully resist and when I fought back, he stopped. It was a miracle. I didn t realize my resistance would just put more pressure on my 8 year old sister who was now the focus of his attentions anyway.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>When I was 15 I moved to SM for the summer to work in a rich family s home. After a second summer engaged the same way, my family moved to this city of beautiful people. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Two years later I graduated from high school, got pregnant and married all in a matter of 4 months. My new husband found out about the lovely house and pool Bad Uncle owned and we accepted an invitation to go visit. After the visit I told him about Bad Uncle. He told me I was lying.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Bad Uncle s daughter became pregnant at age 15 and our babies were born within a few months of each other. We continued to be invited down for visits. I hated it and used every opportunity to insult Bad Uncle and his wife. Eventually we became unwelcome, and since I wouldn t let Bad Uncle ever spend a moment alone with our baby, it was hardly a wonder. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>A year or so later, when Little Sister became pregnant, and was uncooperative, (she was 15 by then ), mother and father wanted to send her there to stay for a few weeks. I protested. And when pushed, told my parents why they should not send her there. They did not. But they also did not believe me. Or at least mother said she didn t. Apparently father pursued my tale and confirmed it with Big Sister, though he didn t tell her how he knew, so for two more decades she didn t know my story.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>My cousin went on to marry and divorce a couple more times, and had two more children. Impoverished as a single and uneducated parent, she lived with her parents off and on, and when they moved to <st1:State><st1:place>Arkansas</st1:place></st1:State>, she moved with them. Her two younger children, a boy and a girl were both molested by Bad Uncle, but to them he was of course a Bad Grandfather.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>[Decades later when they told their mother (aka, my cousin, who claims she was never molested) she believed them and we think she even confronted her mother (Helpful Aunt). At this time my cousin told me her grown son said,  He [sexually molested] me everyday after school for a long as I could remember, until one day when I was about 12, when suddenly it stopped. It is a little difficult to confirm this story now. My cousin has since then developed something that may be early-onset Alzheimer s Disease.]</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>In later years when my Big Sister or I tried to talk to our mother, we were accused of telling spurious lies just to hurt Helpful Aunt. Or, if it really was true, (hard to deny after this many stories), we were accused of dwelling on this story instead of just forgetting it.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>My father died after being a wanted man for the last third of his life (20+ years). It was maybe 20 years after my father s death that my father s twin brother told me of the connection between the bouncing insurance payment and the bad checks that, as bizarre as this sounds, seems to have been the trigger for him being wanted by the authorities all those years. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>My 13 year old sister would never have been in that car, in that place, had our mother trusted her and listened to her, and she wouldn t have broken her teeth and there would never have been the bouncing insurance payment.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The molestations all those years previously by Ralph probably couldn t have been prevented, given the secrecy of such things in the 1950 s, especially since his initial<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>attack on each of us happened when we were so very young. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Bad Uncle s behavior continued for at least 40 years. This was not a good man who did a bad thing. This was a bad man. Big Sister and I wrote to Helpful Aunt with this information multiple times, but she claims the letters didn t reach her. In all this time, other than telling my parents in 1968, I had never told more than 3 or 4 very close friends about Bad Uncle s behavior.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>I notified the local authorities in <st1:place><st1:City>Baxter County</st1:City>, <st1:State>Arkansas</st1:State></st1:place> sometime after the 1974 passage of a federal law that I knew would force them to investigate when an accusation was made. (After 1974 but before 1984.) Prior to then it would have been ineffective to register such a complaint, because molestation was commonly ignored then, especially regionally (hence the federal law). It was also true that several years had passed since he had last attacked me, and in those days any complaint needed to be registered within 7 years to have legal standing. It is possible my letter to the social services department and their ensuing enquires is what brought Bad Uncle s sexual abuse of his grandson to its abrupt end. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Today <st1:date Month="9" Day="22" Year="2005">September 22, 2005</st1:date>, I find out that quite possibly Helpful Aunt is still unaware that her long dead husband molested me, or Little Sister. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Too terrified to face them while he was alive, during the 10 years after Bad Uncle s death, Big Sister twice attempted to talk to Helpful Aunt, hoping to gain some resolution. At the first meeting Helpful Aunt denied ever receiving the letters Big Sister had sent, and Helpful Aunt had no interest in the subject -- though she kindly said she was sorry for her and hoped Big Sister would be able to  get over it. The second attempt resulted in a similar stifled conversation of no more than a handful of sentences. Helpful Aunt concluded it with the statement  he was a good husband to me and so I can t hate him. This is a big step for Helpful Aunt of course. It is acknowledgment that Bad Uncle might justifiably be hated by someone else. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Today I learn that Big Sister apparently didn t mention any of the other injured parties either of the times she spoke to Helpful Aunt, though Big Sister knew about her younger sisters and even the molested grandchildren by then. I am coming to realize possibly (probably?) nobody has ever told Helpful Aunt of the extent of her husband s atrocities. Not forced to acknowledge the crimes, it is not surprising that she hasn t or apologized for them.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Get over it, they tell me. Move on. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>They don t know this whole story though. For the past 10 years I have been the only one who knows the connection between my father s legal problems and Bad Uncle s predations. Mother doesn t know that that is why Big Sister didn t want to go to his house, and was therefore in the car accident that cost her her front teeth.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Big Sister doesn t know that it was that insurance check that put our family over the edge and outside the protection of the law.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Helpful Aunt? What does she know? Does she know she enabled Bad Uncle. All the while she was being such a superior person who would never allow herself to have inconvenient pregnancies, or be married to an irresponsible husband who couldn t take care of his family. The success of Bad Uncle s behavior was largely dependent on our father s inability to respond. Was Bad Uncle an even bigger gambler than our father; risking everything to abuse children? Or did he protect himself by placing phone calls and writing anonymous letters to notify the authorities of my father s whereabouts, to let his employers know of his shady past.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>This was the late 1940 s, 1950 s and 60 s when most of these things were happening to me and my siblings. The police did not follow us when we left SD. By the time we were living in SM in the late  60 s early 70 s, when all but the youngest child [and I am fairly confident that Bad Uncle had never been able to access him.] were all grown and flown, the authorities no longer came around. Is this a coincident? Or had Bad Uncle simply moved on to other victims, no longer needing to emasculate our father?</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>After all those years of working under false names (and without earning SS credits), father now could hold down a steady job. But he had always done the hard physical labor of a welder, for decades he built ships, later power plants in <st1:State><st1:place>California</st1:place></st1:State>, and then a tunnel for the California Aqueduct. His body was worn out. He applied for and was offered a job in our local community college. He would teach welding. Though without a formal education, he had patiently educated himself to a high degree. A patient and caring man, he would have made a great teacher, but they said they needed his fingerprints to do a standard background check. He never went back.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>About ten years later he died of a heart attack just hours after leaving the card tables of <st1:City><st1:place>Las Vegas</st1:place></st1:City>, still trying to provide some money for his and his wife s retirement.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>This is just the outline. There is plenty of flesh to hang on this skeleton. The other evidence for Big Brother s maltreatment at Bad Uncle s hands, beyond the proven fact that Bad Uncle molested other boys: Big Brother is mentally ill  yes, I know this is a chemical disorder in the brain  but it can also be evidence of major stressful events triggering those chemicals, and since all three of us girls were molested, why not him too?</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Which brings us back to Bad Uncle. Was he a thoroughly hideous person? Yes. But sometime way back there in his early <st1:State><st1:place>Missouri</st1:place></st1:State> childhood, he himself was molested and was thereby taught this behavior. It is one of those inherited diseases.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>I am told to just forget and move on.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>I cannot forget. As a young adult, I tried. When others wouldn t believe me, I pushed it back down and thereby reneged on my duty to tell so that other children could be spared.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>I cannot forget. I don t want to forget. Each year that passes I learn another bizarre detail, and draw another possible conclusion to link the improbable with the unthinkable. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>I don t want to forget. This is the lemon from which I could make lemonade. This is a story that competes with the Greek Tragedies for complexity and poignancy and a doubling back twist that enables the hero to stab himself in the back as he finally tries to do the right thing only when it is too late anyway.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Do I want to hurt my mother? Only a little. Do I want her to suffer? NO! She struggled far more than most, to do the best she could for her children. Do I want to hurt her sister, Helpful Aunt? Yes, a little. But I don t want her to suffer any more either.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>I do want them to know what their silence did to each other. Mother s [apparent] silence at a time when I first told her resulted in: Bad Uncle not getting treatment, and therefore the molestation of Helpful Aunt s grandchildren. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Has it ever occurred to my mother that Bad Uncle could have been the rat that led the authorities to our doors and repeatedly prevented our father from living at home, from stabile employment? From being in a position where he might have protected us? Bad Uncle had a lot to gain by such actions and like his wife, he scorned our father, an intelligent, self-educated, resilient and basically happy man. (In spite of all he had been through, he remained cheerful, a hopeless optimist to the end.) </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Did Helpful Aunt s enabling result in the final and utter financial* destruction of our family? I cannot believe she ever intended the results; I think she just knew deep down inside, in a part of her soul she never could bring herself to search, that if you don t keep feeding the monster, he will come after your own. [*Our father s gambling as a mature adult was I believe, in addition to an addiction, also a desperate act to achieve financial stability when earning a living through regular employment failed him.]</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Helpful Aunt often compared her fine family, fine house, and fine husband with our mother s dysfunctional family, tawdry dwellings, and jailbird husband. She has always had an excess of pride, quick to denigrate others for their lack of will to do  good honest work. With sickly sweet words, she has pitied the misfortunes of her nieces and nephews, refusing to acknowledge the damage done to them by her husband. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>What she didn t see was that most of the children in my family became strong and educated, not something her own children achieved. Does she understand yet that a lovely house is a piece of shit when it is occupied by cruel people. Her fine husband was a lie. He wasn t good, even to her. By molesting her grandchildren he hurt everyone in his family, and he hurt her. He was not a fine husband. At 87 she is now homeless. She is no longer welcome to live in her daughter s or grandchildren s homes.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>These sisters  my mother and my aunt -- hurt each other, unwittingly. They each destroyed the other s husband: one in real time, the other after he was dead. My father was unable to provide for his family, or protect his children. Bad Uncle never got the help he needed, never was able to make amends and ask for forgiveness. His life was a lie and his wife knows it. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Will this story never end? Probably not. Does it gain anything for these two sisters to hear the complete story, to understand their roles in it? </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>As a writer, I would like to think I could tell it well enough to bring a tear to my mother s eye. Can I at least have that? I would also take some pleasure in seeing the horror of understanding flicker across Helpful Aunt s face. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>The past has a horrible bad habit of showing up, uninvited at every family gathering. Ghosts of secrets still unspoken, linger. They ask to be put to bed, to go to their final rest. Please Momie, don t make us go to this family get-together. Listen to our story. Just once, trust us to tell the truth. We have, finally, the words we lacked as toddlers. We can tell you now, if only you will listen.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>No, I know you won t. I can t blame you. It is hard to be a character in this story. So, I ll offer a message to my un-related reader: Listen to your children. Trust them.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>I am, in a perverted way, happy to have such an interesting story to tell. In some ways I <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>would</i> like to be done with this pain and misery. In most ways I have always put it behind me. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>Most of the other affected children have  given it to God. I think that must mean they ve forgiven these bumbling adults who failed them. But I don t even think these adults need forgiving. They lived their lives in the culture of the time, doing the best they could with what resources they d been given. Even Bad Uncle had no desire to physically harm anyone, and I doubt he could perceive of the concept of mental harm; he was from a very backward place and though he became a well-paid mechanic, he never became educated. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>I cannot forget. I don t want to forget. This is the rich and colorful story of my life. I have not suffered much as an adult, and count myself fortunate to have been relatively little effected by Bad Uncle s behavior. Relatively little effected in a direct way, that is: No eating disorders, no inordinate fear of men. I have for many years considered myself practically as a bystander who escaped the direct hit, only to be trapped by the view of those who lives have been torn apart and damaged in every conceivable way. Because of the ages they were when they were attacked, or their more fragile makeup to begin with, or other inexplicable reasons, I perceive that the damages brought down upon our entire family have been much harder on the others than on me. </p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-family:"Wingdings 2";mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family: "Wingdings 2"'><span style='mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:"Wingdings 2"'>c</span></span></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>I would not be writing this now, except that Helpful Aunt, unwelcome with her own offspring, will soon be returning to the west coast. She is moving to the town where Big Sister has taken refuge. The two siblings whom I, in my patronizing way consider least able to protect themselves, Big Brother who is mentally ill and Big Sister, will soon be expected to attend family gatherings with Helpful Aunt. To be obedient and respectful children. Silent and polite on matters of importance.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight: normal'>Short essay on the meanings of:  sorry,  apologize, and  forgiveness <o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:-.3in;margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:-.3in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'>This issue is unresolved and too painful to hear or talk about for most of the people in this story. Big Sister tells me that even though Helpful Aunt avoids the subject, she says she is sorry. But I say it is easy to be sorry. To apologize is what she needs to do. There is a difference.</p> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <ol style='margin-top:0in' start=1 type=1> <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in'>When you stub your toe, I say I am <b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>sorry</b>. I regret that you are in pain.</li> </ol> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <ol style='margin-top:0in' start=2 type=1> <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in'>When I trip you, I <b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>apologize</b>. I may have done it accidentally or on purpose. Either way, some fault, even unintended, lies with me.</li> </ol> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <ol style='margin-top:0in' start=3 type=1> <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in'>When, as a result of the tripping above, you fall on your face and break your nose causing a life-long change that can never be undone, I beg <b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>forgiveness</b>. It may have been an accident or a foolish prank, but in some way it is my fault, and I have done something that cannot be undone. </li> </ol> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <ol style='margin-top:0in' start=4 type=1> <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in'>You forgive me because you, yourself, have been equally careless or mischievous. You understand the pain of the guilty party and wish to ease it. </li> </ol> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <ol style='margin-top:0in' start=5 type=1> <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list .5in'>When overt malice was intended, it is harder to forgive. But if the request for forgiveness is sincere, it is given. Even if there is no request for forgiveness, it can still be given, because it is better to let go of anger than to harbor it. </li> </ol> <p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p> <p class=MsoNormal>As adults, we are all guilty of malicious acts from time to time and totally stupid acts more frequently. It is part of Karma: good and bad things circulate indirectly. We try to outweigh our occasional stupid and vengeful acts with frequent random acts of kindness and charity, hoping that somehow the good will find its way back to the stranger we once harmed, the person from whom we can no longer beg forgiveness. </p> <a HREF="index.html">Return to Suemap Home Page</a><br--></td> </tr> </table> </div> </body> </html>