{Warning: Talks about tough stuff...}
Kelli and I had talked for nearly an hour, when the question came up.
"What was your single most traumatic event for you as a kid??"
My mind flipped rapidly through my childhood memories, like a Rolodex (sorry millennials)
That time mom locked us all in the bedroom every night because of the Night Stalker.
Oh my gosh, me too!
Is it called reminiscing when its traumatic?
Kelli and I had never talked in depth about this as adults, until that moment.
It was the summer we were 10. Our California house was on the end of a cul-de-sac, Hillock View Plaza. It wasn't as fancy then as it sounds. A tract home, every fourth house was exactly the same as ours.
Dad had been out of the house for two years. Mom struggled to keep up. Cleaning and organization were never her talents. The clutter and chaos had descended so slowly Kelli and I hadn't noticed.
Mom watched the evening news religiously. We as ten year olds probably should not have watched the news quite as religiously, but mom only sheltered us from odd things like Three's Company and Johnny Carson.
Being in Southern California the news had its fair share of violence, crime, car wrecks, and scandals.
I remember throughout that summer hearing something about a serial killer on those news reports but didn't really understand what that meant.
One evening there was a special news report, the entire broadcast devoted to this one story.... Serial Killer Stalking Orange County.
Mom should have made us go play but instead insisted we sit beside her on the brown love seat and watch the whole thing.
Fear gripped our house.
The next morning mom took us to the hardware store to buy 1 x 2's to secure all the sliding glass doors and windows in the house. By that evening she had hatched a plan to keep us even safer....
We three, our two dogs (pound specials) would sleep all together in the first bedroom down the hall. It was the only room with only one window and an extra lock on the door.
That night at dark mom took us all into that small bedroom. A chair shoved under the door handle the last measure of security she could conger up.
We laid there, tv blaring, mom crying until sleep rescued us. When dawn came we were allowed out. Mom's fear was all she could talk about day after day. There was no escape for her innocent audience. The sequester lasted from dusk to dawn for weeks. Mom's fervor was like falling asleep to a horror movie each night. I wondered if we'd die each night....
They finally caught the Night Stalker at the very end of August, just in time for all of us to return to school. The barricaded sequester ended just as abruptly as it started the month before. But I never felt safe in that house again and mom was never the same. We never mentioned it again. But its mark, changed us, forever.,
I recognize now that what we were seeing in mom was untreated mental illness, fear had turned into psychosis, but we were ten and we didn't have the vocabulary to explain what we were going through or the even the knowledge that this was not normal.
Kelli and I have spent years, each in our own way, to shed light on the darkness of our childhood. I have learned that with light, shame and fear cannot continue. We are not broken, nor do we need pity. Our compassion for ourselves, and others has just come at a very high price.
We have no idea what each other carries or what they have had to endure. So just be a light to everyone.
