[as a reminder, I gave up ranting on Saturdays for Lent {just Saturdays ... not other days}]
... the ides of March are always a personal holiday for me.
It's not so much that I'm a proponent of Caesar-cide (although I do sometimes like me a side of Caesar), but, instead, it's that March 15 changed my life in 1989 ... now, unbelievably, 25 years ago.
Since it's been so long ago and since it was such a defining moment in my life, you may have already heard this story. But that won't stop me from telling it again ... because I'll be telling it for all my days ... to my grandkids ... on my death bed ... (that presumes that I'll find the elusive "grandchild" store prior to finding myself in a state of demise).
In the style of Sophia ... picture it: Lebanon, Pennsylvania, 1989. On the evening of the day known as the ides of March ... a tiny scrawny little boy (who was actually a senior in high school, but who was stunted in social skills and in physical health) carried three boxes of his belongings across the busy Rt 422 ... one at a time, and, on the third trip, his biological father, who was home at the time (not that that had kept his fourth wife [note: this tale is more Grimm than Disney, but I won't focus too much on the gory parts] from having locked this boy in his bedroom [fear not, gentle reader, as this boy, although skinny and scrawny, had brains to compensate from his lack of brawn, and although he was locked in a room, it was a room that had a separate outside door that, heretofore, he had barely opened, because fear was the currency that ran this household from which he was escaping] as she went and enjoyed her religion [which she had rediscovered after a life threatening car crash that resulted in a steel plate being put in her head where her brain should have been ... and since her former lover was the pastor {the same religious professional who performed the marriage ceremony of one of my best friends a few years later}]). But I digress (as you can tell if you tried to follow that gigantic sentence filled with parentheses, brackets and braces ... my specialty).
This night ... *this* night was different. Different than all the other times ... the time I actually went to live with my bio-moms when I was in first grade (ah, children of our generation ... mostly pawns in adult relationship games) ... the time I was forced to play hooky from school and I missed eighth grade Field Day at the Junior High School because the rumor was that my mom and my sister Holly M were back in town from out west specifically for the purpose of kidnapping me (like sands through the mother f'in hourglass ... so were the days of MY life) ... the time I took all my VBS money and put my Hardy Boys books in a sheet and wore all my socks and no shoes and walked to the local Hills and spent all my cash on the bubble gum machines (because my survival strategies were clearly not honed) ... the time I walked the train tracks behind my house after my evening chores and slept in my Dad's van (where he found me the next morning at 4am when he got up to go to work) ... AND the time I made it all the way to the Hebron church pastorage with my Star Wars blanket full of things but had to be sent back home (was I some kind of hobo in a former life)?
This night ... *this* night I escaped for good. Skipping over the sordid details (since this post is supposed to be a rave) ... I know, twenty five years later, that it all worked out as it should have because of the love and support of family, friends, bosses and even strangers. So, as I am wont to do every year around this time, a thank you to Jarrod S (one of my first true friends, whom I met while working at the East End McDonald's and whose mother [RIP] let me stay at his house despite my runaway status, where I ate McDonald's chocolate chip cookies and watched Monty Python movies with him and the guys who, to this day, remain some of my oldest and closest friends (I'm looking at you Eric F and the kid who's not on the FB). And thanks to Kerri G, whom I was "dating" at the time, and whose father (RIP) let me take over a space in their house for the first week of my new freedom until things got sorted out, despite the potential repercussions of hiding someone underage (this young 'un didn't turn 18 until his second semester of his freshperson year at LVC).
And thanks to Steve B, my boss at McDonald's, who helped instill in me a work ethic ... and who helped me set up "baby's first bank account", so that I could start out this independence with my best foot forward. And thanks to Sherry G, my sister, who was ever present throughout all of these trials and tribulations, finding ways to make sure that I knew there was a life beyond that which I was trying to survive ... and that people cared ... and that I'd always have the support I would need to strike out on my own. And thanks to Wendy W, who learned of my plight, and to her mom Judy W, who was engaged in a special church program at the time, and who, just like that, became my surrogate family ... taking on legal and fiscal responsibility, going with me to pick up the rest of my things that had been placed outside on the deck, and putting me on the path to a college education and showing me what a family is supposed to be (Wendy literally went from being the girl who sat in front of me in English [whom I had known as a classmate all through school] to being my surrogate sister overnight).
These are the folks I remember each year on this date ... recalling *this* night I've been describing (and its immediate aftermath). But the list could be much longer. Because although I said "strike out on my own" in the paragraph above, I never ever was "on my own". I had the love and support of these individuals AND of so many more (both in those crucial months leading up to my high school graduation ... and in the many years of college after ... and beyond ... up to this very day). -- high school teachers who closely monitored my circumstances (including one who stored my prized belongings [you know -- like junior high school awards and letters from my mom and sister] after a carefully planned caper to put them out back on trash day so that a friend could pick them up before school to smuggle them into safety), Hebron church folk who were there to help me be the best person I could be despite my challenges and who snuck me away on Friday afternoons so that I could publish my church youth newsletter, college staff who took a special interest in my well-being throughout my many years there, and eventually even the lady who became my surrogate grandmother (RIP) after an internship in western PA for a year and half break during my undergrad.
So ... I can look up at the sky with tonight's full moon and instantly be transported back to *this* night twenty five years ago ... but one thing I couldn't do then is know all the places I'd go ... and the people I'd be better off for meeting ... and the freedom I'd have to explore ... and to travel ... and to try new and different things ... and to love and be loved by so many more individuals than I ever could have thought possible on *this* night way back then.
For that (and so much more), I am grateful *this* night ... and *every* night of the past twenty five years. From the bottom of my heart and the depths of my soul ... thank you ... thank you ... thank you ...
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