Webster's Dictionary says the definition for forgiveness is: the act of forgiving someone or something; the attitude of someone who is willing to forgive.
Briefly, as I have touched on here, my parents drank, were insecure, did not know how to deal with my dwarfism, were violent, mean a lot, fought constantly, and very unhappy. Had it not been for my dear mentor/adoptive parent/friends and my fierce determination to rise above and beyond the horrors and sorrows of my childhood, I never would have been able to become who I am, accomplishing all I have. The deeper sorrow carves us from within, the more we may attain by not letting our sorrow define who we are and all we can be.
And sorrow carved me deeply. Yet, there is a touching story here.
I love music. However, there is one song that ripped me apart when it came out. "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast," hit the charts in the early seventies. Some of the words are, "Daddy don't you walk so fast, Daddy slow down some because you're making me run, Daddy don't you leave me..."
When I was almost five, my father took me deep into a woods late one day. I was struggling so hard to keep up with him, and the faster he walked,
the further behind I was getting. I remember screaming, "Daddy don't walk so fast! Daddy slow down I can't keep up!" Then I got caught in a huge patch of brambles and couldn't get free, I cried "Daddy don't leave me!"
There is a reason why I seldom revisit this, and it is because I can still feel the terror and abandonment my five year old self was feeling. He left me. Years later he told me because he couldn't deal with the dwarfism and what people thought of him having a kid like this, besides wondering what my life would be like, he felt he had to make me disappear. So on that day when he got really drunk, he took me to this woods in winter with the intent to abandon me there.
I was screaming for him to return. Then it began getting dark. And cold. I was terrified. And I KNEW he had abandoned me. I cried for my baby sitter I wrote about here earlier.
He told me he got in the car, and was speeding away. Something caught his attention. It was my tattered stuffed horse I carried everywhere on the seat next to him. Suddenly it hit him, "What the hell am I doing?!!"
At first, when my father reached the woods, he didn't know how to find me. Then he heard faint crying, and followed the sound until he found me. Though I was happy and relieved he came back, that terror of abandonment never left.
Soon after, from when I was six to nine, the fighting between my parents worsened. And the drinking. My father would avoid coming home and go out drinking, while my mother was at home drinking and angry. She constantly started fights. I would beg her to please not start a fight when he came home, but she never listened. He would come home, there would be a violent fight, he would storm out of the house with me running after him, crying for him to stop and to please not leave. I would run after his car. Again and again. But he never stopped. I had begun detaching myself from both of them anyway. By then though, I began severing myself from them even at that age.
After I became an adult and lived quite a distance from where they did, my father began showing up drunk, and begging to talk. This period is when he began pouring things out. He had deep regret and begged my forgiveness. The only thing was though, I had buried all the horrors. I had to, because I was struggling through spine surgeries, walking again, cancer wards, and working hard. Suddenly I was faced with all the things I buried.
However, one of my dear mentor friends helped me come to terms with my father. Joseph, who helped me with the "Dwarf Card" (in "The greatest gift" blog) helped me focus on the positives regarding my father. At first I thought he was crazy. Positives?!! But he was right. There were. My father was an incredibly gifted pianist for one thing. Felix Mendelssohn is my great, great, great uncle. His sister Fanny, my great, great, great grandmother who was also a composer, was married to Wilhelm Hensel, an artist. Their father, who some say I look just alike, was Moses Mendelssohn, the philosopher.
My father's siblings and parents were all gifted musicians. Joseph helped me take pride in my heritage. He taught me to embrace what the sorrows of my childhood did by carving me into an amazing person because of my courage and determination.
Due to my father's years of drinking, when he passed away at sixty, he looked as if he were in his nineties. I saw him for the final time a few months before he died and our talk was a good one. We both felt sad though, for all the things destroyed by the drinking, but at least we had made a peace. I could forgive.
Daddy don't you walk so fast. My father had at last walked slowly so I could reach him, and finally place my hand into his...
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