Maybe grief was not okay in my family. Or any big emotion. Certainly, anger was unacceptable. I wasn’t much older when I began to be punished for having “temper tantrums.” Either my mother would leave me alone on the floor of the living room to “cry it out,” or, when I was older, she would send me upstairs to my room until I calmed down. If I stomped up the steps in anger, I had to come back down and walk up quietly. I knew why anger was bad; my father had a big temper, too. He was never one to hit or spank us, but he was a large man, and when he was angry, his voice and his presence swelled to fill any room. His explosions sucked all the air out. My breath would freeze on the inhale, and I would shrink, trying to make myself too small to notice. My mother was evidently concerned that I’d grow up to be like him because I also expressed frustration and anger. I eventually learned to wrestle with the big feelings and to attempt (not always successfully) to tamp them down. My mother socialized me using shame and humiliation. My father’s name was Melvin, and when she really wanted to keep me in line, she would call me “Little Melvin.” I hated that. I knew what it meant, and I was afraid that I would grow up to be like him, or at least like the worst of him. I don’t mean to paint a totally negative picture of my dad – he was a loving man and father, but he loomed large for me on the anger front.
It was in those early years that I met Persephone. I began taking ballet classes at age 3. One of the first ballet recitals I danced in was the Persephone story; I had the role of the north wind in the meadow where Persephone was abducted. I loved ballet. Out of all the nine years of recitals I performed in, this story is the only one I remember. It stayed with me. I began writing Persephone poems as a teenager. Although I never experienced the kind of extreme trauma that Persephone did, I lived in fear of change, of being dragged down into the dark realms, of waiting for some other shoe to drop. I always expected it would drop. I was wary. Uncertainty was to be avoided. I made the decision not to risk too much, not to reach too high, not to shine too brightly. I remember telling a friend in 7th grade, “I believe in never expecting too much because then you’re never disappointed.”
But I am old now and desperately tired of fear’s grip on me. I worry that I am too old for whatever initiation may be required to change this. There are traditional rites of passage for adolescents, for new mothers, for entering the elder years. I am entering the elder-elder years. The final initiation gapes like an open doorway in my mind’s eye as I get closer and closer. As Mary Oliver says, "I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world."
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