blogger profile

Getaclewis

I'm a ghostwriter and book editor - there are a lot of amazing and inspirational stories that deserve and need to be told... so I help shape and polish the writing first!

I'm a mom of two teenagers and the wife of an amazing man and, at heart, a loner who doesn't like to be alone. Some days, I want to jump on the bed and laugh joyously and, other times, I can barely suppress the temptation to crawl under the bed and hide from the world. Bi-polar? Nope... just a girl!...

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Innocence Lost

I remember it like it was yesterday, though I’ve done a good job of shoving it alongside the dark forgottens of my childhood.

That night, just before time to tuck in, I propped myself up in the bed beside him and then I touched his private parts. I only did so for a moment, but I did so.

I don’t know why I did.

I can’t, for all that is life within me, understand what would have inspired a young girl, not yet in her teens, to examine the innocent pieces of a child she was babysitting. I was a child of the church - thoughtful, cheerful, trustworthy. I was the girl every parent could embrace.

At home, where none could see, I was also the sister that a brother could touch. I was shy and deeply insecure and I guess he just knew I wouldn’t tell. Just as I’m genuinely baffled that I touched that child, it perplexes me that I never told of the times I struggled against my brother’s insistence as he pitted his strength against my own and used his hand to feel his way inside my clothes.

“God wouldn’t want you to do this,” I remember telling him more than once.

He just laughed and continued his groping.

I remember being thrilled when the new dentist in town and his wife invited me to babysit. I loved being anywhere but home. Plus, they paid more than most and the assignment was an easy one. I don’t recall the age of their son, but I know he was young enough that I must have felt I could touch him that one time without rebuke.

I didn’t prod; I touched for the briefest moment. He didn’t react. It seemed a non-event.

His family never called me again. They moved away not long afterward.

There was no firestorm of wrath for what I’d done and I certainly never told of my crime. I internalized deep shame so silent that, even now, I question that it truly happened. Yet I know with certainty that it did. I pray fervently that my behavior has not haunted that child’s life.

Never again did I feel another curiosity or temptation to do such a thing, so why did I go there then?

I have no idea and can only mourn that choice. I would burn off my hand before I would harm a child. Innocence is sacred and, for some, fleeting.

I wonder now who else was abused in my family. Since I certainly never told of what was happening to me, it’s possible that there were others so near, also keeping their silence in shame. What was my mother’s experience? My father’s? My brothers’ and sisters’?

I’ve been told that sometimes parents look the other way if siblings are “curious” when they’re young. But what happens if that curiosity doesn’t settle for natural outlets as they grow older? It truly puzzles me that a member of my family would want to bother me so.

When I was a child, my family was steeped in high drama. There was a great deal of arguing and even occasional violence, as my mother’s marriages weren’t successful, and emotions ran high. Someone was always in trouble for something and, with six kids at home, I suppose that’s to be expected. But there was also a lack of supervision that stuns me. As a mom myself, it’s tough to imagine letting a child see the things I saw.

Each time we visited my grandmother’s home, one of my younger brothers and I would shimmy on our bellies to the coffee table, giggling as we pored through the stack of pornography magazines housed there. I learned more in those pages about kissing than I ever did on a date. Anytime we would wander into my aunt’s or uncle’s bedroom, it was no big deal to spot a bag of marijuana in the jewelry box. The scent was unmistakable, even to someone with no interest in drugs.

And then there were the afternoons, when school was over and Mom was away working the late shift as a motel desk clerk, when my older brother would corner me. Since we were in church every Sunday morning, it baffles me that some of our days could contain such pockets of hell.

When I shared this post with someone I trust, his face scrunched up as though he was the one in pain.

“I just can’t imagine what you did… the things done to you,” he said. “Can’t you just write it and not mention that you did that? I mean those parents trusted you… according to what you’ve written, you’re telling the world you were untrustworthy.”

I said, “That’s exactly my point! I was 12 years old and that was my world. When someone is touched, sexually molested, they are at far greater risk of turning around and touching someone else. Unless we peer behind the scenes, very little may be as it seems on the surface. Parents SHOULD take a closer look.”

Someone should have protected me… someone should have protected him… very likely, someone should have protected my brother, who did those things to me. He was still a kid, too and, despite the fury I held for many years, he was probably not some evil spawn. What took him there?

“I’m just afraid people will look at you differently after they read this,” he said.

How can I make him understand that, if I don’t include what I did as a child… and I am pretty certain I did do that… alongside what was done to me, the point is lost? The value in God permitting it all to happen – and then taking me from a place of utter fear to the raw courage of sharing – would be gone. This is a peek into how lives can go awry. We can walk around in fear and secrets our whole life, but we’ll never change the world that way.

I’m tired of tiptoeing through the hazardous maze of my past. I want to strip the tattered blinders from my anger and let it burn, fierce and fiery, for all the world to feel.

It’s about more than scrutinizing your babysitters more closely, mind you – it’s about slowing down in the flurry of soccer games and parenting chaos and creating a safe atmosphere for communication with those kids who cross your path. It’s about furiously caring.

I’m an adult now and my husband and I teach Sunday School together in our church. One of my missions in life has become to protect children. When I look at the bright faces of the fourth graders who come to us for fun and guidance, I wonder sometimes about what they experience at home.

Are they being protected as they should? Are they being groomed for lives of joy and wholeness or is there sadness and betrayal about which they will never speak? My fierce prayer is that they are permitted to be children while they are young so their lives can be rich and full.

But these days, I can do more than pray. I can remember – lest parents forget.