I Am Coming to Terms With My Childhood
One lonely summer I remember stumbling on the idea that I could keep myself company by finding something to do on my own. I was a socially awkward kid who was shy and deathly afraid of being "found out" for my deficiencies and flaws. So, I kept to myself and no one seemed to notice, mind, or intercede. Looking back, it was as if my solitary confinement seemed like the natural order of things.
One hot humid morning in July, I sectioned a small piece of our backyard and created a garden of sorts. By small, I mean the size of an index card, in the back corner. I must have spent at least 3 or 4 hours digging out a clearing and using blue 10 pound fishing test line that I carefully unwound from one of the fishing reels in the garage. I drilled small holes in some dowel scraps I found, threaded the test line through them, and staked the dowels in a rectangle around this self-declared garden. I divided the area into thirds. In the first plot, I replanted a shoot from a maple tree. In the second plot, I planted some Macintosh apple seeds. The 3rd plot, I kept open for "future growth." I visualized a tiny "Sims"-like world and felt secure in this miniature sanctuary space with my daydreams of worldly control. I watered my index card sized garden and kept the weeds and grass from intruding the rest of that week.
That weekend, my father tended to his "real" garden, so I casually walked over to inspect my share of the backyard, but I did not linger so as not to get caught. On Monday, after my parents left for work and everyone else was out and about, I went to check on my spot. It no longer existed; it was as if it had never existed. The transplanted tree shoot was gone, the staking was removed, and the tiny garden was rubbed out. It was silly, really, but I felt despair. Not anger, not remorse, not vengeance. Only despair. I recreated that space twice more that summer and each time the outcome was repeated.
My father never mentioned anything to me and I never brought it up. I didn't have the right to that space; I wasn't worthy of any backyard land at my parents' house. I sometimes come back to that moment, that feeling, that recognition and wonder if it was my self-worth that got rubbed out in that 3 x 5 rectangle-world I was never allowed to keep.
