Gratitude

When I was 8 years old, my mother became convinced that I would be kidnapped. She was positive it was going to happen. She had nightmares about me being snatched. I would catch her staring at me, picturing kidnapping scenarios… One nice fall day, as I walked home from school, a blacked-out van would pull up and a masked man would press a chloroform-soaked cloth to my face and poof! No more Carlita. Or maybe this… As I played in the backyard, a strange man would offer me an ice cream cone to entice me to his blacked-out van and once again, well, if I was naive enough to follow him… chloroform, cloth, no more me. I tried to tell her I would be fine, but to no avail. She would not let me out of her sight. She made a rule that I could only ride my bike in our front or back yard. She would promise me every year after that I could ride my bike in the street. When that year arrived, she would postpone it to the next year. "When you're 9… No, when you're 10…. Well, maybe when you're 11." Mom was mainly terrified due to a couple of dramatic child-snatching television movies that were both "based on true stories"… they had done their job in my mother's case.

The first was a movie called David. I recall it clearly, though I haven't seen it in twenty plus years. A father kidnapped his own son, took him to a hotel, doused him in what I think was kerosene and set him on fire… because of his impending divorce from David's mother. The boy survived, but with burns over 90 percent of his body. A terrible, heartbreaking story indeed. One I could understand my mother becoming affected by, if her situation had been at all similar to the one in the film. Yes, my parents were also separated; however, it was a very amicable separation.  But this movie had impressed my mother to the point where this important piece of information seemed to have escaped my mom's brain through some sort of mental hatch. She became paranoid from that point forward that something terrible was going to happen to me when I was with my dad. Notwithstanding the fact that my father adored me and was wrapped around my finger. Whenever I returned home with bags full of toys and clothes instead of severe burns over my body, I could almost hear her internal sigh of relief.  My father was almost as bad as she was. No, he didn't believe my mom would set me aflame; he was concerned about "other people." Every conversation with my dad ended with the question, "Nobody's bothering you, are they?" My father's definition of "bothering" was someone touching me, asking me to touch them, hurting me, kissing me or anything else untoward for which I knew he would literally rip them apart with his bare hands…

Then, there was the movie I Know My First Name is Steven. A lot of people around my age may remember this film. The main character was a young boy who was kidnapped by a pedophile who convinced him he was his new adoptive father. The guy abused the kid for years until he escaped as a teen.  That was about the time my mom started peering at the backs of milk cartons and imagining my little brown face and long, fat pigtails staring back at her… 

When I had to start walking home from school, as we only had one car for a while, my mother, without fail, would be waiting for me outside before the bell rang. I was utterly and completely embarrassed by this and would sometimes intentionally walk far ahead of her.  And yes, I feel absolutely awful about this now.

My mom's obsession continued until I was a teenager. When I was 15, while shopping at Wal-Mart, my mom and I went our separate ways in the store. I (of course) went straight to Books and Magazines, where I proceeded to get engrossed in the latest installation of whatever teen series I was into at the time, probably Fear Street or a Sweet Sixteen or something similar. I can block out the world when I'm reading and that day was no different. I finished the book in about an hour, put it back and walked down the aisle. As I turned the corner of the aisle, I saw Mom. But not just her… no, she was being physically held up by a uniformed security guard, as tears rolled down her face. Apparently, they had been calling my name over the store's speakers for about a half an hour. Mom, convinced that I had been kidnapped, talked the security guard into helping her search for me inside the store and in the parking lot. By the time I turned that corner, she was tearfully telling him between sobs that there must have been at least two men that had captured me, because if it was just one, I would have fought him and made enough commotion to attract attention… I was floored. Not only had she successfully convinced herself that I was in the hands of at least two or more men, all of them sex offenders who were waiting to snatch my 5'10 self out of a well-lit, fairly busy Wal-Mart, not once did she look in Books. I was 15, embarrassed and not sympathetic to my mom's plight at all at the time. I asked, "Knowing ME, did it not occur to you even ONCE, to look in Books?!" Then I saw her face, which was tear-stained, tired and overjoyed that I was alive and well… so I just gave her a hug and we walked to the car.

The thing is… my mother loved me. Both of my parents loved me very much. I was always well aware of this as fact, didn't always understand the depth of it, nor did I appreciate it until I got older. And I am just now beginning to fully appreciate the wholeness I have always felt from being loved so much. And understood as well… my parents always GOT me even though I was and am very different from them. I am well aware that I had a pretty awesome childhood, full of love and fun. I know that not all children were as lucky as I. And it's been kind of hard for me sometimes to fully comprehend how badly adults can be broken because of family dysfunction. I get it a lot better now than I used to. Thank you to both of my parents who continued to work together to love me, protect me and care for me even when they weren't in love each other anymore. I'm stronger because of you and my heart is wider because of you.