Dec 11 2013
I have become fiercely protective of Ara’s privacy (some things/events are part of her journey and therefore I do not have the right to share them), but she agreed that I could share this; especially if it might, eventually, help other kids with addicted parents.]
Tonight, Ara and I walked by ourselves to the Argonaut. Even though it’s an innocuous event, it does bring up a lot of memories for me from that summer Scott was away, walking to work, every evening, by ourselves.
As we were passing Star & Shamrock, I mentioned to Ara, “We haven’t done this in a while: walk by ourselves to the Argonaut…”.
“Not since Daddy was away.” she replied quickly (almost like finishing my sentence).
“You remember that?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said, but her previous response was so fast and so visceral, that clearly she remembered something.
There are some who might say that trauma is a one-time event; that we can put things in our pasts and leave them there. And that our kids are too young to remember things if they can’t speak about them.
But I believe trauma lives not only in our memories, but our bones and our genes as well. And it sneaks up on us when we least expect it.
Tonight, in what was a fairly benign (slash loaded) conversation about family, I told Ara that I would never not be there for her. That there was nothing she could do, and no person who she could become, that would make me miss out on her life or her babies’ lives.
And she burst into tears.
Talking about her being a momma is nothing new for us. From almost the time she could speak all she’s wanted to be is “a Momma, like you”.
(Like me.)
Since then, she’s both narrowed and expanded her horizons, adding not only a “library-girl” and a “dinosaur-bone-putter-together-er”, but also a “teacher”, and almost anything else she can imagine, with the only constant being, of course, “a Momma, like you”.
And almost every day we talk about all of us living together, forever.
And being there for each other.
None of this is new.
I held her and we all sat on the kitchen floor as she collapsed into my arms, sobbing, and eventually, when she stopped crying, I was able to ask why me telling her that I would always ALWAYS be there for her made her so sad?
“Because Daddy wasn’t there.”
We talk about Daddy being sick all the time and even though her brain doesn’t remember the actual specifics that much anymore – at least not in a way she verbalizes much – clearly she does. Maybe in her mind, but also in her cells.
And it’s probably compounded by our own pain and the trauma in our cells.
The questions remain:
Is she remembering the loss and trauma she experienced at three?
Or the pain of having a father in active addiction up until then?
If it’s not her brain remembering, is it her cells?
Is our lived pain compounding it?
Our cellular pain?
And, most importantly…
…does it even matter which?
shaaren pine 