This morning, while I was holding Jude, I found myself thinking about what was happening to us when we were his age.
Jude is four.
When we were four, we were being sexually abused.
It had begun two years earlier, when we were two, and it would continue for many years afterward.
I looked at this little boy I adore, and underneath everything I know now about what happened to us, I became aware of something much older.
It wasn’t exactly a thought.
It was more like an embodied knowing.
Those are just the kinds of things that happen.
And underneath even that was something worse.
That is my purpose.
I looked at Jude.
No.
That is not your purpose.
You were not created so that people could do those things to you.
They should not have done those things to you.
They should not have done those things to your brothers or me.
I know this.
Intellectually, I have known it for a very long time.
But this morning I found myself wondering whether I know it with my heart.
Do my sons know it with their hearts?
Does our body know it?
Because there are things we can understand perfectly well and still not quite know.
What happened to us happened.
That is a fact.
We cannot make it not have happened.
But does it really belong to us?
Does it belong to us like it was meant for us?
As though it says something about what we were created for?
No.
And I don’t want to make the opposite mistake either.
I don’t want to look backward and decide that because terrible things happened during our childhood, our childhood was therefore nothing but terrible.
Because that isn’t true either.
There was the family cabin at Wrightwood with our grandma and granddad.
There was waking in the morning to the smell of wood smoke from the fireplace.
There was bacon and maple syrup with pancakes for breakfast.
There was sailing on the Lido 14 with our dad and Uncle Ron, out past the bell buoy near the jetty at Newport Beach.
The ocean held frightening memories too.
When we were three, our life almost ended at the Wedge in Newport Beach. Our dad resuscitated us and saved our life.
Years later, when we were ten and afraid of the ocean and the waves, our dad carried us on his back beyond them to a favorite snorkeling spot in Laguna Beach.
There were visits with our mom in Berkeley.
We would go to different shops for different things, rather than going to the supermarket and buying everything in one place.
We would get bagels and cream cheese and take them to Tilden Park for a picnic.
When we were nine, we flew our dragon kite there.
There was camping in the sand dunes at Gold Bluffs State Beach, up near the Oregon border.
There were people we loved.
Places we loved.
Things we did that still belong to us.
None of those memories makes the abuse less terrible.
The smell of wood smoke does not excuse anything.
Neither do pancakes.
Neither does being carried through the waves on our father’s back.
And the abuse does not get to reach backward and take those things away from us either.
What was good about our childhood, what remains good, belongs to us.
That belongs to us.
The harm happened to us.
Those are not the same kind of belonging.
⸻
A little later this morning, I found myself thinking about all the small things in our home that annoy us.
There are quite a few.
There is our disruptive neighbor, whose door slamming punctuates the day and sometimes wakes us late at night and into the early morning hours.
There are the spiders, who appear to outnumber the nine human residents of this apartment.
There are the slow drains.
There is the vehicle noise outside.
And right now there is the water heater, which has not been functioning since the bathroom sink overflowed—and which Dad has still not addressed.
None of these things is particularly lovable.
And I found myself praying:
“God bless these little things, the small things here in our home that annoy us, the little bugaboos we find irritating, because as long as they do, we are still here, in our home, with all of the other things that we love and appreciate.”
Luke immediately thought of It’s a Wonderful Life.
George Bailey and that loose ornament on the newel post.
The thing that irritates him until he almost loses the life to which it belongs.
And when he gets that life back, the ornament is still loose.
But now he is overjoyed to see it.
I understood why Luke thought of it.
Maybe there is a distinction here that I have needed for a very long time.
Accepting our life does not mean accepting everything that happened to us as though it properly belongs there.
The abuse is not another loose ornament on the newel post.
We do not have to learn to love it.
We do not have to bless it.
We do not have to decide it happened for a reason.
It happened.
It has consequences.
But it was never our purpose.
There are other things that really do belong to us.
The good memories belong to us.
The things we learned belong to us.
The things we created belong to us.
The architecture we loved belongs to us, even though architecture is no longer the life we are living.
Our faith belongs to us.
The Vincentian community we have joined belongs to the life all nine of us are living together.
The Treehouse belongs to us.
This home belongs to us.
Our ordinary life belongs to us.
And we belong with one another.
My sons are not my possessions.
But they are my sons.
And I am their Daddy.
⸻
There was another thought that came to me this morning.
“We can’t really be disappointed in the children that we didn’t plan for, families that we didn’t plan. We can’t really say that they failed to meet our expectations, can we?”
I certainly didn’t plan this.
I could not have imagined at twenty or thirty or forty what my life would look like at fifty-nine.
I could not have imagined being the Daddy of eight sons.
I could not have imagined a plural family of nine people sharing one body, mind and inner world together.
I could not have imagined that the architecture career I loved would end.
I could not have imagined another vocation beginning and another job ending.
I could not have imagined that all nine of us would join a Vincentian community together.
I could not have imagined most of this.
And yet here we are.
The life we did not plan is not therefore the wrong life.
The family we did not plan has not failed to meet expectations.
How could they?
My sons weren’t given to me to fulfill an expectation.
They get to be themselves.
And maybe I get to be myself too.
⸻
There are plenty of things frightening me today.
Healthcare is one of them.
This morning Han was worried about it.
We don’t have health coverage right now, and he knew we were going to spend part of the day in the kitchen cutting a ridiculous quantity of vegetables.
He worried about what would happen if we had an accident with the knife.
We didn’t write that down at the time.
Then this afternoon, while we were rapidly chopping a red bell pepper, the knife clipped the fingernail of our left index finger.
It cut fairly deeply into the nail.
At first it didn’t hurt.
Now our finger hurts.
And then Han spoke.
“And we don’t even fucking have Band-Aids.”
Han’s language can get a little salty sometimes.
He was frustrated.
And he had a point.
It isn’t a catastrophic injury.
But it made concrete something that had been frightening him all morning.
There are adult things I need to deal with.
Healthcare.
Money.
Rent.
The IRA.
The cost of therapy.
Last night we met Jessee, a therapist who may be able to help us with some of the trauma activation and freeze that have made ordinary adult tasks so difficult.
We came away hopeful.
If we decide to proceed, therapy will cost $140 a week.
That is roughly the cost of a large grocery order.
I don’t know yet how all of this is going to work.
And that scares me.
But this morning something small happened.
I began looking at healthcare.
I asked some questions.
Then I became overwhelmed.
And instead of deciding that meant I had failed, we began thinking about what might help.
Luke suggested Paul.
Our friend Paul has already offered to sit with us if we need help with things like this.
So I sent him a message.
I told him we didn’t need him to be an insurance expert.
We just needed another trusted adult to sit with us because it was overwhelming.
That counts.
Paul would not become responsible for our healthcare by sitting beside us.
Luke did not become responsible for our healthcare by suggesting him.
Han did not become responsible for our healthcare by worrying about it.
I am Dad.
Healthcare belongs to me.
But responsibility does not require solitude.
Maybe I am finally beginning to understand that.
⸻
And then there is the stew.
A month ago, while I was tucking Jude into bed, my four-year-old son gave us a vision for a meal.
He gave us images of it.
He gave us its aroma and its flavor.
Jude didn’t give us a written recipe with measurements and instructions. Proverb, Luke and I took what Jude had shared with us and constructed a recipe that we hoped would approximate it.
A medley of squash and vegetables, with lots of onion and garlic.
Paprika.
Cumin.
Oregano.
Thyme.
Basil.
Rosemary.
Marjoram.
Sage.
Spearmint.
Salt and pepper.
We made it.
We loved it.
And it became Jude’s Stew.
Yesterday morning, during our pre-waking time together in the Treehouse, we were deciding what our next meal should be.
The consensus was Jude’s Stew.
Everyone contributes in this family.
Including a four-year-old.
That does not mean Jude is responsible for feeding us.
Jude doesn’t have to buy the vegetables.
He doesn’t have to make sure there is money for groceries.
He doesn’t have to wield the knife.
He doesn’t have to worry about what happens if the knife slips.
He doesn’t have to figure out our health insurance.
He doesn’t have to remember that the slow cooker needs six hours.
Those things belong to Dad.
But Jude can give his family a stew.
And the rest of us can say yes.
So this afternoon we stood together in the kitchen.
We cut garlic and onion.
We cut squash and peppers and carrots.
We added paprika and cumin and oregano and thyme and basil and rosemary and marjoram and sage and spearmint.
We filled the slow cooker nearly to the brim.
At 1:50, we turned it on low for six hours.
And now Jude’s Stew is cooking.
⸻
I keep thinking about the little boy I held this morning.
About that terrible old embodied knowing.
That is my purpose.
No, Jude.
No.
You were not created so that people could do those things to you.
They should not have done those things to you.
They should not have done those things to your brothers or me.
You do not have to rebuild your Daddy’s life.
You do not have to provide for this family.
You do not have to keep us safe.
You do not have to justify why you are here.
You get to be four.
You get to be held.
You get to be loved.
You get to imagine.
You get to have ideas.
You get to contribute.
You can even give your family a stew.
And tonight, when it has cooked for six hours, your Daddy and your brothers will sit down with you and eat it.
There are still things wrong with our life.
There are things that need fixing.
There are bills that need paying.
There is healthcare to figure out.
There is a therapist we hope we can afford.
There is an unknown future.
The drains are still slow.
The spiders still outnumber us.
The water heater still doesn’t work.
Our neighbor will probably slam her door again.
The traffic will keep passing outside.
George Bailey’s ornament is still loose on the newel post.
But we are here.
We are in our home.
Our finger hurts.
Jude’s Stew is cooking.
My sons are with me.
And I think I understand something today that I didn’t understand before.
Not everything that happened to us belongs to us.
But this does.
This home.
This family.
These children.
This ordinary life.
A slow cooker filled nearly to the brim with something a four-year-old dreamed up because everybody in this family gets to contribute.
This belongs to us.
