Growing Up in Sour Earth

“Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.” 

Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

If know you me personally or just follow my life’s adventures through Facebook, you know that I am a bubbly talkative extrovert, very hyper, and a little ditzy.  I’m not being self-deprecating; my mind just moves so quickly, my consciousness often has a delayed reaction to a previous tangent.

I’m blessed with a seemingly endless well of creativity, and have experimented with every medium available to me.  About five years ago, I started doing mixed media sculpture, and found my artistic home there. It no longer matters to me that others understand my work; it is what satisfies me. Typically, daily I take a couple of hundred pictures, write, and spend at least an hour outside at my favorite pond.  My sculpture, photography, writing, and that outside meditation keep me centered, and prevent my mind from implosion caused by my own unrelenting thunderstorms of thought. A creative mind like mine is dangerous when restricted; obsessing over irrelevant details that deadlock the thought process and entangle the emotions in triviality.

Despite my outward flighty presentation, emotionally, I am ridiculously strong, because I grew out of “sour earth.” My parents married because I was on the way, and divorced when I was four, by which time my two younger siblings had been born. It was emphatically impressed on me that my siblings were my responsibility, and if anything ever happened to them, it would be my fault.  This created an overwhelming sense of parental responsibility for my brother and sister that exists to this day.

All three of us experienced sexual and physical abuse during childhood, the details of which are unimportant here.  The abuse did not come from either of our biological parents.  The abuse is what life brought, we can’t go back and change it.

Abused children suffer through years of confusion over social issues. We seek definition of our self-worth from our outer world. It took all three of us years to come to terms with the abuse, and how it integrated into our personalities. Eventually, we became strong adults; but only after years of feeling inferior, self-degradation, denial, and finally acceptance that we cannot change our pasts. Once we figured that out, we all moved forward into true adulthood.

My body has been through more surgeries than many children born with severe handicaps.  My physicality and I seem to be constantly at odds, resulting in a klutziness that invades my whole persona. I’m the person who tosses a pen across the room as I’m gesturing through a conversation, spills a drink at least once a day, and wears her keyring through her fingers because otherwise, I’m picking them up every five minutes.  This body usually acquires a new Ace bandage, brace, or sling at least once a year. I had ovarian cancer in 1996, spinal meningitis in 2002, and esophagitis in 2009, all three of which tried to kill me.  I beat them all.

On the day after Christmas in 2003, I had gastric bypass surgery.  I weighed 328 pounds the day I went in for surgery, and now exist between 165-175 pounds. The burst of energy that accompanied the weight loss was completely unexpected to me. I was energetic before, but post-surgery, my energy exploded exponentially, and I began to seek more and more avenues to disperse it and satisfy my internal craving to create, to explore, to learn, and to be productive.

So you may read all this and think, “Oh, well, this all makes sense, no wonder she is a strong person.”  In truth, the one thing that strengthened me beyond normality is what happened to us on June 2, 1990.

Our young son, Aaron, had a seizure that night.  He stopped breathing, and as I was giving him mouth-to-mouth and Max was calling 911, his heart stopped beating under my hand. Paramedics came, our dog jumped through an open window barking at them, we were all screaming hysterically, they sent us out of the room, medical supplies flew in every direction, I don’t even know where our oldest son Travis was.....

The paramedics made us leave our home; told us to meet them at the hospital.  I never forgot walking to the car that night, seeing all of my neighbors standing there in those flashing red lights; their faces frozen in a simultaneous combination of fear, curiosity, and care. That whole night is frozen in my mind, even now, 22 years later.  The details never left me; I can close my eyes and see it all over again.  From the initial moment when I realized he was seizing till the moment the Life Flight helicopter took off, to arriving at Hermann and learning the black and dark prognosis the doctors gave us for Aaron’s future----this is a fixed point in my consciousness.

It took 28 minutes to restart Aaron’s heart, by which time he had significant brain damage. He was in PICU at Hermann Hospital in Houston for nine days. They ran all kinds of tests to diagnose which of his physical systems still worked.  They thought he could see, but not comprehend his vision. They decided he could hear, but not comprehend what he heard.  His involuntary systems stabilized; his blood pressure, heart, lungs, all still worked fine.  But, he had no muscle control; they kept him intubated because if they did not, his tongue would collapse into his throat, suffocating him. I remember thinking, “It’s OK; I can handle this, deaf and blind people survive all over the planet. It’s a different kind of motherhood, but I can handle it.”  I learned how to anoint his eyes so they did not dry out, feed him through a tube, and suction his saliva so he would not choke on it.  The first couple of days, when we approached Aaron’s bed and spoke to him, we saw a response in his blood pressure and knew he was still in there. But by the third day of his hospitalization, this was gone.

For nine days while Aaron was on life support, I felt God was holding his hand, just waiting for Aaron to be allowed to leave his physical vessel and step into heaven.  Because he had about 10% brain activity, we had to testify before an Ethics Committee for removal of his life support. On June 11, 1990, the tube was removed from his throat and Aaron went on to heaven to await our arrival.

Aaron’s death is the fire by which my subsequent personality is defined.  If you know me now, you know a very different person than that girl who existed before June 2, 1990.  I journaled every single day in the years after Aaron’s death. The first thing I wrote every day was “One Good Thing.”  I decided if I could find one good thing about every day, I would eventually find a reason to live.  Sometimes, my good thing was as basic as, “The sun was out today.” Those little nuggets of goodness were all that kept me going for a long time.

Eventually, of course, you just go on living.  It’s not like you really have a choice.  We had Travis to raise, we welcomed our daughter, Jennifer, two years after Aaron’s death, and we just kept on walking.  The weight of Aaron’s death never lightened, we just got used to carrying it.

I’ve often thought over the years,  “OK, God, losing Aaron was the worst thing that could ever happen. So, now we get a break, right?”  LOL!! Wrong assumption; adversity continues to intrude on our lives, and we continue to be tested.  But, I’m OK. I became a different person, survived, enjoy life and am grateful now for every second I get.  Now, you all know why my family is so very important to me. I missed time with Aaron, working long hours while my husband was the at-home daddy. I never want to miss another opportunity; these days, my philosophy is to say “yes” to any new experience. Any chance to be with my kids and grandkids, make a new friend,  experience a new event in the natural world, get to learn something new—anything that pushes the boundaries of  life, I accept with gratitude.

I’ve been told by friends that my optimism is overwhelming.  Now, you know why. It was a conscious decision to look for that one good thing.  Frankly, bitter and solitary would have been easier, but in my mind, it was a denial of the depth of love I felt for my son.  His life brought us such joy, I did not want his death to be futile. Turning away from the world minimalized his existence and our loss.

So, yes, I’m a strong person. I’m not bragging about it.  I sure as hell didn’t ask for any of this.  Life just is what it is.  But for those who may think that extroverted, ditzy, blonde exterior is the depth of me, maybe you can now understand the forces that guide me.  I’m not obligated to justify myself to anyone, but when close friends who knew all this previously give me admiration, I’m uncomfortable and feel obligated to explain the reasons to new friends.

I’m not a real private person, and I don’t seek attention, but for some reason, it just keeps coming and finding me.  Several events have brought my name before the general public this past year including rescuing a drowning kitty, writing about my favorite duck friend, and our recent and massive garage sale to pay our back taxes.  I don’t really care about the attention; I’m more concerned with doing the right thing for myself and my family.  I’m compelled to follow this path so I can be reunited with my son.

Without the “sour earth” of my childhood, I might have drowned in the depths of the emotional trials which have swirled through and around my life, tossing my heart around like a basketball, twisting my emotions until they are taut and at the breaking point.  That sour earth made me gave me a strong foundation; the continued tests just further toughen me.

In the end, I am more grateful for that sour earth than any other gift in my life but my children.  Without that sour earth, nothing that’s happened to me would have meaning, and I would not have the ability to learn from each situation that’s arisen. When we stop learning and growing, we die.

So, thank you again, Lord, for planting my seed in sour earth, and giving the me the capability to survive and still laugh about all of it!

For all those I love who love me back,
allison