My Grandhood And My Childhood

To this day, I can still remember standing at the end of my driveway watching my mother arrive home from the bus stop. This day was different; she was not coming home empty handed. In fact, she had stopped at a yard sale on the way home and bought a prize for me, a doll named Suzy. This memory, from the age of two, embraces the story of my mother and my entire childhood. In Indianapolis, Indiana in September 1980, I was born to a single mother. Throughout her life, she worked for the phone company in downtown Indianapolis. Even though she raised us through hardships and despair, she always took the time to love my brother and me outwardly. Until second grade, I have no recollection of my father visiting more than three occasions. At last, in fourth grade we began to spend weekends at his house and with his family. Sadly, when I was eleven we learned that my father had cancer. One week before Christmas, after a school music program, I read his obituary in the paper and told my mother he had passed away. From that moment, our family forever changed, specifically my relationship with my mother.

My mother was like the average black mother in the hood she was single, and young. She is a hazelnut light brown and 5’0, small and feisty. She had me at nineteen, and her mother had her at fifteen. I guess it was an accomplishment that she had at least graduated before having me, but as usual she was not married. Just like them, I was supposed to be a single baby’s mother. My father is mixed with white and black. Because of him I am light complexion with curly hair. I used to hate having lighter skin. “Becky sue, Big Red and White girl,” is what I got called. At a young age I was teased for not being black enough. My father was raised by his grandmother, because his mother and father was on drugs. My father is a very intelligent man, but in his younger years he was a menace. In his later years he got a stable career, and got his life on track.

My childhood was a very dark place for me, I didn’t have as many friends and people were bullying me and I started to become a bully myself including hurting my family members. There was also a lot of family issues in my life, Also with my school life with the grades that I was making.When I would come home from school, my parents would always argue and have always fight. My mom would always make me read a book to her before she and I went to sleep and before I finish my last sentence,an argument occurs and then I would cry and feel depressed and a lot of adults were making fun of body and making rude comments. For example: I would open my fridge and my grandparents friend would come over and see me pull out a jar of ice cream and say to my grandparents “she looks like she pregnant, why would you allow her to eat ice cream. She will get bigger.” I didn’t have as many friends or talents. I tried everything I can to help others, but they just use me and call me mean things.

Reminiscing my childhood has given me a good kind of nostalgia. It reminds me how it felt to have no worries about school papers that is due on Monday, no responsibility whatsoever on cleaning the house, and especially no anxiety on how I looked or how I acted stupidly with my friends, just pure enjoyment and play. Indeed, this stage in man’s life was the best. It is free from the dirty and corrupt minds of the world. In the eyes of a child, everything is innocent and perfect.

Decapitated baby dolls and rated R movies shaped my childhood. Now, before you throw my essay in the round file and write me off as a potential serial killer, hear me out. I was not raised like many of my peers. Obviously, most of their parents made sure that the movies they viewed were age appropriate and I am pretty sure they would not have been so passive if the found dismembered baby dolls in their daughter’s playroom. However, my parents were different… very different. Instead of watching the typical family movies such as Matilda and Toy Story, my family spent our weekends watching The Matrix Series and The Godfather Trilogy. While most may not agree with these customs, my seven-year-old mind was far more thrilled at hearing Marlon Brando saying “kiss the ring” rather than Woody talk about snakes and boots. Besides, I closed my eyes during the intimate scenes so that makes everything okay, right?

My family was never the one that went to church every Sunday, or prayed before meals, or prayed together at all. In fact, we still don’t do those things. However, what has changed from then is that we are all spiritually connected with God to a greater extent because of each of us developed our own faith over time. Growing up, my Mom taught us who God was and the tremendous amount of love he has for us and that we are all His children created in His image, but that was, for the most part, the extent of it. As much as I wish I had additional knowledge concerning The Bible and God’s word, I couldn’t thank my Mom more for only teaching me the basics about God. It was that which allowed me to discover God and my faith for myself and not rely on other’s thoughts and beliefs placed in my head as a child.

My memory of my childhood is fuzzy at best, probably like most people. There are many important events in my early life I cannot remember, like the events of September 11, 2001, or the first day of kindergarten. I also do not remember much of my musical life prior to middle school. My family was not a musical family. We did not constantly play music in our house, if we ever really did. Nor did my parents very often put on albums that they loved from their younger years. Music mostly seemed cosigned to car rides, whether the radio for quick car rides from home to school or to the store, or one of my dad’s CDs that he kept in his glovebox for long car rides to visit my grandparents or my aunt and uncle. Nonetheless, we did listen to music.

Most of what I remember of my life is tainted with a glistening, crude feeling that overwhelms all my senses. My memories are filled with fondness, but, at the same time, underneath, in the core, is an unimaginable feeling that cannot be described by any other words than a shadowy torment. It was not immediate, and I have not experienced it my entire life, but all that I remember of my life is filled with it. It is a pain so twisting, so cruel, that it has unraveled my entire life.

How can anyone to expect to change their flaws when they can’t accept what they already have? Many people look into a mirror and can’t see their own reflection; I am no different. It’s true that there are things about myself that I wish I could change if I could. I am the type of guy who doesn’t admit his faults. Whether it is the things I talk about or my actions, people do have an opinion of me. To get a better idea of myself, let’s start with my early childhood in elementary school.

The idea of forgetting what happened in my small town never allowed me to recognize that I was very scared during those years of my life. On the contrary, I have been always looking at the good side of the situation. Obviously, this happens because I do not want to go to that place of pain again. I prefer avoiding that pain by talking about the good experiences that have come from that frightening situation: I lived in Bogota, I met many people, I came to the US, etc. However, the reality is that I did not address the fear directly, I just avoided the elephant in the room, but I know it has been always present.

I do not have a lot of fantastic memories about my childhood, but I have never forgot a person who accompanied me through my early childhood--my grandfather, Shuzhen Wang. Although he died when I was seven years old, Wang is one of my family member who I really respect and thankful for. He spent his last few years to teach me how to be a person who I want to be. In my mind, he was versatile, warm-heart, adamant, and upbeat person.

It was mid-January, and spring was approaching. Just as the seasons were changing, so was everything in my life, but it was going to be for the better. My journey began eight years ago in my early teens. I was physically and mentally abuse by my own parents. My physical abuse came from my father and the emotional abuse from my mother. As I was in this abusive relationship with my parents I felt alone and lost. I felt like I couldn’t go to anyone for confront. My trust from them and others was fading away.

Have you ever had moments in your life when your own courage or someone else’s courage put you in awe? Was it that moment you saw firefighters rushing down the street to unknowingly help strangers in a burning building? Or, when you saw your baby brother finally build up the courage to ride a bike without training wheels for the first time? For many, the world “courage” has boundless meanings. Courage helped me become a woman and to close a roughly written chapter in my life I thought I could never close.

As human beings in a world growing so fast, factors of a person are bound to change. At this point of my life, I can say that I am my genuine self. My grandmother’s presence and death, torment in middle school and acceptance into the Regional Arts Program affected me to a great extent, not many people knew. I was a very sensitive and reclusive child, however, have learned to become a more outspoken and stronger person. As a child, I felt the need to restrain from being myself. I describe it as feeling like being trapped in a cage, being able to reach out but not fully letting myself to show who I am. I instantly became a follower, allowing my insecurities to mute what I actually felt and enjoyed. I constantly weaved in and out of situations, which lead to some of the darkest times of my life. My insecurities and fears were the bars of my cage that never let me break free.

Suddenly! The tall iron gate stood in front of me. Behind it, the garden was a picture of total desolation. And nestled in it, was the house. My house. I recognized it. However, I still had doubts about this impulsive identification. If this house were mine, how could it possibly have fallen into this terrible state of neglect? Did my absence last longer than I thought? Or, by some cosmic anomaly, was time more destructive to those particular grounds?