They call it toxic positivity for a reason. I have a photograph of my family taken in my parent’s kitchen where we are all tan and smiling broadly. We all look so happy. I remember commenting back then that we look like we’re posing for a toothpaste ad. It would be decades before I uncovered the truth of that insight.
We looked happy because we were told to smile. One big happy family. And much of that was true, but not as it was directed – rather, as it was felt, intuitively, unconsciously, in the moment. In glimmers through a child’s heart.
Despite the dysfunction of drug and alcohol abuse, there were also fantastic experiences together as a family. My happiest childhood memories are of long vacations on the boat. We had a Chris Craft cabin cruiser and traveled in caravan with other young families, all over the Great Lakes, through the 1,000 islands of the St. Lawrence Seaway, and to my favorite destination: Georgian Bay, Canada. It was barely populated back then, and is still one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Nature was our sanctuary. Everything moved slowly. We scooped our drinking water from the lake. Spent hours in the hills picking wild blueberries until scared off by a distant bear. Lingered lazy hours away in the sun. I remember swimming underwater as a shortcut from one protruding rock to another, only to surface right under a snake as long as me! (I would later identify it as a water moccasin.) Life was fun and blissful, otherworldly. I purchased my first record album in a little country store on a remote island – Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon. I’d never heard of the singer, but I was fascinated with the drawing on the cover. It looked like something I would draw. Some awareness would wake up in me that summer and my life would never be the same. Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?
At the age of 12 my brother Ward was the youngest registered member of The American Power Boat Racing Association. My parents bought him an outboard hydroplane which would have to be weighted to prevent becoming airborne, and he would blur past the back porch practicing for the annual race on the Detroit River. He was having the time of his life.
Ward died last year at the age of 62, apparently of a heart attack in his sleep. I am still reeling from the shock and grief. Ward was not speaking to me at the time of his death. I was hopeful that we would get through that and become friends again in our old age. But Ward’s story is not one of childhood fantasies come true, it is instead of enduring abuse, of giving up cigarettes, of overcoming alcohol and drug addiction, of never being able to kick his gambling habit. It is a story of decades of struggling with mental illness and depression.
Ward was crazy smart. He could fix anything. He didn’t know how to rest. He worked hard all of his life. As it happened, he called his employer and apologized for feeling too sick to work the day he later died. We shared a love of music, especially the blues. He would never have a successful love relationship, he would be homeless from time to time all throughout his adult life. I would kick him out of my home twice, decades apart. I accompanied him to court when unfairly accused of domestic violence for defending himself. He would be violent at times, and he would be the victim of violence. Like me, he would always be a loner and prefer the company of animals to people. I am the eldest of 5 children; he was the fourth born. We had the same parents, grew up in the same house, had some of the same teachers in school. His story and my story are intricately entwined, as are the stories of our other 3 siblings. It feels like a betrayal to tell Ward’s story, and it feels like a betrayal not to. I love my sweet little brother deeply and I will miss him the rest of my life.
Our other 3 siblings will not speak about the abuse in our childhood. So from now on I will only tell my story, and note the common thread, the scarlet thread, the blood that bound us. Perhaps then I will enjoy rest. Until then I will practice rest as resistance. And I will allow nature to be my sanctuary.
“You are exhausted physically and spiritually because the pace created by this system is for machines, and not a magical and divine human being. Your body has information to share with you, but you must slow down to receive it. There is power in knowing you are enough right now and always.” – from The Nap Ministry’s REST DECK by Tricia Hersey
A Painterly Home 