The Stone Child: my brittle ego shatters

Me, in what I hope is pre-stone age

Last week, my cousin Katharine’s post, a handmade life, from her beautiful Substack, essays from the edge of town, had a snippet about Haskell’s Island in Casco Bay, Maine. When we were girls, Kathy’s mom, my aunt Polly, took up residence in the house we called 97 because it had a door from a shipwreck with that number on it. Shipwrights built and maintained these houses with Maine-ish practicality.

Eleanor and Kay at 97

That Island is the epitome of an idyll. Without electricity (There wasn’t even a generator), everything was cooked on an ancient wood-burning stove, which, of course, those women had mastered. No roads (There were no vehicles), only footpaths along rocky seacliffs, through marsh, field, and forest. There was a wild raspberry patch behind the house, which was situated with a commanding view of Little Cove in the front and ocean-facing wild rock cliffs in the back. Aunt Polly was a teacher, kind and gentle. Her mother, Kay, was my grandmother Eleanor’s sister. The men came up on weekends or whenever work allowed. It was a haven from the alcoholism, sexual impropriety, and domestic violence that swirled secretly inside my house, which I’ve written about before. Since Kathy’s parents never uttered a cross word, I let my shoulders drop from my ears for weeks at a time.

Sometime around the end of June, I’d drive up from Massachusetts with my grandmother, and stay with Katharine’s sane family until my father, mother, my three brothers, and the dogs cruised up the coast from Massachusetts in the Chris Craft, which slept all six of us. He’d anchor in Little Cove for the week or two of his vacation, then I’d hop on the boat and chug home with them. Or the reverse trip happened too. I’d come up on the boat, they’d leave after a week, and I’d drive back later with my grandmother. Haskell’s Island was part of the reason I survived my childhood.

When I was married in 1996, Katharine’s parents gave us three days in the little red house called The Shanty as a wedding gift, and I was able to show one of the best parts of my childhood to my husband, Tom, as a way to prove there was more to me than fuckedupness.

The Shanty

So, last week, my cousin’s post brought up the time we were coming up from a swim, and her little Shetland sheepdog, Tammy, grabbed the corner of my towel, had a tug-of-war with me, then suddenly let go. I flew back against a boulder jutting up in the field and broke my fall with my elbow—a big, bloody gash. The remarkable thing, her parents had said, was that I never cried, not as we crossed to the mainland, the 30 minutes or so by small boat, and not in the car or the doctor’s office as I was being stitched, and certainly not on the return trip. Did I remember that?

And, I do. Mainly because on my honeymoon, as we were loading our supplies into the skiff for the trip over to the island, Uncle Roger recounted the whole story, still full of wonder that a child of ten could have such an experience without crying. A little over 25 years later, that was the thing he remembered most about me. The story hit me sideways then, and last week, when Katharine mentioned it, more than 25 years on top of that, it slid in sideways again. Why was I so tough?

Aunt Kay and I shelling peas from Eleanor’s garden. 97 was white by then

The funny thing is, thinking about that story now makes my eyes tingle. I want to go back in time and tell that ten-year-old that she can exhale. Except, what do I know? Maybe if that girl let all the terror and helplessness pounce, she’d shatter, and maybe at that age, the shards wouldn’t fit back together so well. Maybe tough was a refuge. I wonder now if my Aunt Polly and Uncle Roger knew what my stoicism was hiding. Probably not.

I didn’t cry much when, seven years later, my father fell or jumped from his boat and drowned. I don’t remember any of the fourteen days his body was missing. Still, I’d bet a week’s pay I didn’t cry, just as I didn’t cry at his funeral, not even when my grandmother, Eleanor, shook my hand as she went through the receiving line looking ten years older than the day before. At seventeen, I couldn’t cry unless it was late at night, I was very drunk, and I’d driven to a secluded spot on the other side of the river where no one would see. Then, I’d pop in Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle and wail until my shirt was wet. Turns out, the superego dissolves in alcohol. But that didn’t count in my reckoning because I was not in my right mind. It didn’t heal either, because there is no real surrender in drunken tears.

Toughness is a big feature of my ego, which loves competence and hates helplessness. Also, it craves male approval. So, among descendants of stoic New England Puritans, one way for a tiny, insignificant girl to gain some male approval was to refuse tears. Plus, crying prompts people to ask what’s wrong. What leaps from my audio cortex is: what happens in the family stays in the family. When my father said this, he specifically did not mean grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins. He meant we six who knew things.

So, it’s no surprise, really, that my ego doesn’t bend or melt. It shatters. About a year ago, pre-Substack for me, it shattered again when I thought I was safely decades past that stage of healing. Curious, I made a little list of the times during the almost 40 years spent healing childhood trauma, when circumstances have risen like Jonah’s whale to dash my ego against the rocks. There were eight major events. I’ve already written about the first three, here, here, and here. I’m sure you aren’t interested in the last five because it helps me delay writing about them.

In each case, it’s a worldview that shatters, something I’m absolutely certain is true but isn’t. I’ve come to believe that’s what my ego is: a worldview, an orientation, a story collection. It shatters because the purpose was to protect me from reality. Unfortunately, that includes profound, spiritual realizations too. Worldviews, it turns out, are about controlling the fear of death, and for me, that’s what spirituality was for. Some part of me was still trying to achieve safety in a world where there is none.

I didn’t start crying until I was almost 30. Then, just as I always feared, I couldn’t stop. The first wave of grief lasted three unbroken weeks, a brief respite, and back to work, like contractions. Sometimes I wonder how many hours I’ve clocked in the fetal position. I was right to fear that. If reincarnation is a thing, I’ll respectfully decline. It was worth it, too. It was a long, arduous journey, with freedom on the other side.

One of those shatterings my inner editor didn’t reform. I can’t control myself anymore, which I think was the editor’s purpose. Tears just well up inside me. Sometimes it pisses me off, this inconvenient wetness, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m just a wet person now, but I wouldn’t go back even if I could.

That’s what I told my high school English students when their essays made me tear up, or their circumstances hit me in the eyeballs, or I noticed they had been cutting, or I had to breathe someone through a panic attack. Then there were all those parent meetings… I’m a wet person; it doesn’t mean anything. Or the five times one of my kids died without making it through high school. One of my shatterings was around that. Think about all the hurt adults you know, the ones this culture ran over with a Mack Truck. They were all in high school once. Even the ones who look like they’ve got it going on can be hiding something huge. Often, those kids are hiding the most.

It’s not about rescuing people. Of course, there were times when I had to call child protective services, but usually, it was just about presence, a holding of someone without arms, a softness in the eyes that says, I understand. Something wet from inside me embraces them. Usually, it has nothing to say. What if someone had cracked me open when I was in high school? Could’ve been a disaster.

You can hold a whole class at once if you’re quiet enough, especially a Creative Writing class. It took longer for me to become willing to hold the adults, you know, the crazy teachers, administrators, and parents who used shame or violence to get kids to do their homework or make them behave. Those.

But after a while, I realized that they were high school kids once, too, and I should embrace them. It made no sense to refuse just because they were older. Then, one day, you find you can embrace an entire school. After that, their community. And then they were all just in there, inside presence, making an uncontrollable mess everywhere. It makes my eyes wet just thinking about them.