will not know how to rely on myself or on others.
I do, however, come to know the void inside myself like a boxer must come to know what it’s like to be dizzy.
Soon, I will realize something is amiss and I will become very, very familiar, over time, with the price I must pay.
In a kind of bittersweet poetic justice, my father, that first teacher, having utterly failed to provide me with substantive recognition, will also pay a price himself.
It howls out from his own being, living in his own deficit, missing his own experience of trust or safety or peace.
What goes into this recognition I missed?
It’s not really that complicated.
This is what it could have sounded like to me, more or less, bits and pieces, different times, different days:
“I notice that you are here in this moment.”
“I see you here.”
“I know you are here.”
“I am here also.”
“We are here together now and in the future.”
“I think about you now and in many other moments of the day.”
“These thoughts about you are important to me.”
“I am willing to listen to you.”
“I will try to be patient.”
“I will attend to your needs as best I can.”
“My wish for you is that you will be mostly happy.”
“I have compassion for you and others as well.”
And this is what could have come from such recognition.
I could have said:
“I belong right here.”
“Right in this moment.”
“I have relief here.”
“I know a little about trust.”
“I know a little about safety.”
“I know a little about myself.”
“I don’t exist in a wish or a dream.”
“I don’t exist in merely a hope or a belief.”
“I don’t exist in fear or hurt—not even a fear or a hurt from yesterday or tomorrow.”
“I know I’m here—
my back against this chair,
my foot on this ground.”
It will take a lifetime of practice for me to invent this self-recognition well enough to stand on the ground of my own feelings—to cast a Line, which will land visibly in a still-enough pool.
Along the way, it will usually be very difficult for me, as a teenager or an adult, to be aware that I have a chance for any such relief.
And I will have to struggle with this on a regular basis.
I will struggle to recognize myself.
The dust on the reflection from my mirror will be too thick to see through it.
And as I fail again and again to receive this recognition, even in unrelated ways, even in unrelated settings, quiet pain will fill all my spaces.
It will slowly take my breath away.
It will be like having a window in my heart.
I’ll feel the wind blow through it.
I will live in the shakiness of anger and fear.
I will live the downward gaze of shame and the vigilance of uncertainty.
My emotions will yield only anger and tears.
As a young child, I had felt erased over and over at my father’s knee. But that was certainly not happening all the time. There were some mitigating circumstances. He worked full time as an engineer so his influence got diluted when he wasn’t home. There were some areas that I guess would be described as part of a normal, if not healthy childhood. I had some friends in the neighborhood. I took some refuge with the landlord’s family across the driveway. I played some sports—actually pretty good at tennis at the public courts and ping-pong, which I played with a friend at his house most every day after school.
It was nice to be out of my house.
There was a small Jewish community in town that I felt somewhat, at least, a part of: Hebrew school, Bar Mitzvahs, and holidays at the temple. And, in public school, I did pretty well. By the fifth grade, classes were separated into “accelerated” and all the rest. I was part of the advanced group of kids, and that felt good in a way.
But like all young children, I had a limited ability to have much perspective about anything that was going on. I took things as they came, and later, I would become aware of the templates that had been created. I utterly lacked the requisite practice a young child needed to walk comfortably along with his own sensibilities.
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