"That's My Son!!"





The flight to Miami only took about three hours but during that span of time, being the friendly 12 year old that I was, had managed to meet most of the passengers seated nearby.  I was so eager to see my mother, whom I hadn’t seen in nearly a year that I could not help but unbuckle my seat belt early as we endlessly taxied around the runway in search of our specified gate. The old woman sitting next to me, whose teeth resembled large ivory piano keys, smiled gently as she had heard all about my forthcoming visit to see my mother.  Finally, we came to a halt. 

I walked with a glowing confidence as I exited the plane and gripped onto my oversized luggage like a lopsided mongoloid.  I kept at a steady pace with the cattle of other passengers while we made our way down the long corridor that ended at the baggage claim gate.  As I walked I heard a faint commotion far in the distance which was sounding more and more like muffled yelling.  As the group of passengers and I got closer, the sound started to become eerily familiar.  It was definitely a woman’s voice and she was obviously involved in some sort of confrontation but I couldn’t put my finger on the reason all this rang so close to home.  The other passengers could now hear the commotion as well, as we all searched amongst ourselves to find some sort of answer behind it.  One man looked over at me while I shook my head and smiled sympathetically as if agreeing with him, "Only in Miami right?".  The moment we shared, as two sane people, two normal people that just deboarded a plane to get home to our normal families, came to a life shuddering halt as I quickly realized why I knew that sound oh too well.  “Dear God no,” I thought to myself.  “That's impossible, isn't it?” I tried to reason.  “I mean could that really be her?” I questioned one last time.  The yelling was now starting to form audible words, which were mostly comprised of vulgarity and racial slurs.  “It was her,” I managed to think as my steady confident march slowed to an embarrassing putter that left me looking lost and confused.  My eyes darted up to the ceiling to focus on the elaborate paintings of pelicans and seagulls, the paintings that still haunt my dreams.  The noise was gaining a face now. 

            
My mother was being pinned against a tan brick wall by a heavyset black woman.  The woman wore a tight fitting security uniform and beads of sweat were forming at her brow.  She wasn’t a necessarily happy woman to say the least and she was taking out years of frustration on the small frame of my mother.  Oh, but mom wasn’t one to go without a fight.  For some reason my mother was trying to get past the gate to meet my plane but wasn’t allowed to pass without a boarding ticket.  My mother didn’t need “a shit boarding ticket to see her own motherf***** son” and she was determined to let everyone know that.  “That’s my son,!” she let out in a horrifying gasp as her eyes locked in on me from underneath the sleeper hold that Shandra the security guard had had her in.  “That’s my son, that’s my SON,” I can still hear it in my soul. 

            
I remained calm and tried to blend in with the other travelers, innocent to this incredible sight.  I focused on the sliding doors just past my mother who was now spitting at the guards due to the fact that her thumbs were restrained behind her.  At that point I wasn’t thinking of the lack of transportation from the airport because I would have willingly walked home on my hands if I could have just made it a few more feet to the doors without being seen by her again.  My adrenaline was pumping hard now as I walked side by side with the old woman from the plane who was now babbling on about being able to meet my mom when she came to pick me up.  “Oh if you only knew lady,” I said under my breath.  “Freedom was only seconds away now”, I thought.  But not quite.  “There he is.  That’s my son!” she hollered and waived as she met my face.  Hundreds of pairs of eyes shot over to me in an instant.  “Oh God,” it’s happened.  The man I had shared a moment with earlier now looked down on me with a sort of sad disappointment as I was shunned from the group.  “Don’t give me that look, I was once like you,” I pleaded to the passengers.  The sudden break in commotion left my mother with a window of time to escape as she freed her head from under the woman’s forearm.  Running towards me with her arms flailing insanely in the air I remained still and accepted the ill humored fate that I was given.  I was her son.

"Silent Windows"











Part 1: Always Flush Your Toilet Paper...

The only thing worse than growing up poor is growing up poor in Miami.  This was the humble realization of a child living in a trailer park off the interstate in Southern Florida.

 

The children of Miami have a dangerous way of dealing with boredom and this danger is only fueled when the children happen to find themselves with their working parents’ “trust” in lieu of actual supervision.  We were all latch key kids in Fowler’s Trailer Park. Well, latch key is a loose term as many of the trailers had no working locks.  Of the twenty or so children in the park ranging in age from six to sixteen, Manny Bermudez was the only person I identified with.  Both being the age of ten helped but the true aspect that formed our bond was the self deluding idea that we were both just staying there for the time being, our true homes being mansions far away from Fowler’s trailer park. 

 

Manny had just migrated from Nicaragua with his family because his father thought he might find better work here.  He was a hairstylist and the fact he was not gay didn’t surprise me as much as the fact that he thought hairstyling was an occupation where one needed to relocate often.  He likened his occupation to that of a Navy lieutenant or say, a Country music Deejay.  I didn’t mind though as it brought Manny and I together, and being the only white child in the park, friends were not exactly easy to come by.  I also loved his father.  I hadn’t known mine so he was the closest I had to the real thing, and there wasn’t a moment that went by where I didn’t feel love from him. I remember the first words he spoke to me, “Cada de Amouda”, or “Pillow Face”, as my head apparently, to him, appeared to be rather bulbous in size.  “Heeey Cada De amouda,” was always shouted and mimicked by the family when I walked in the door, leaving me with a warm smile and sense of pride and belonging. Of course had I actually known the translation and not assumed they had been speaking gibberish to me for years, I might have lowered my smile just a tad, or possibly worn hats more often.

           

Manny had the far trailer in the deep corner of the park underneath a large decrepit mango tree which hadn’t produced fruit since the days of the park’s opening.  Manny would meet me under this tree everyday after school sometimes accompanied by his older cousin Paco Hernandez.  I didn’t care for Paco too much as he often greeted me with a soft punch to the stomach or smack to the back of the head.  One day I had taken too much and regretfully decided to retaliate.  My face and body were beat red and I had tears strolling down my face before the fight had even started.  The last thing I remember was running away from him down Old Cutler Road, the passing cars slowing down to observe the splotchy red shirtless child, loudly crying at a young girl’s octave with the waistband of his mesh shorts loosely dangling around his collarbone, the legs of the shorts around his awkwardly running ankles.. 

           

Today Manny came with Paco and approached me, the sun shining high and speckling through the few leaves that remained from the old tree above us.  “What do you want to do ‘Cada de Amouda’,” Manny asked with a yawning anticipation.  Paco flicked me in my lip and said, “Two for flinching!”  Manny scolded him in Spanish about the rules of the game and that he couldn’t actually hit the person if he wanted them to flinch.  I could feel my lip beginning to swell greatly as he chuckled and walked away.  We decided to follow suit from the day before and do something that had to do with stealing or fighting.  We had stolen the entire collection of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Kay-Bee Toy Store and gotten away with it, so we felt as though we had a moved up a notch from petty thief to professional burglar on the Trailer’s totem pole of respectable jobs to have.  The park was surrounded by low-income apartments on all four sides, a sort of vortex of failure where airborne travelers could actually pinpoint the spot where most of the government welfare had been sent.

 

Past the apartments sat groves of mango trees.  “Today we would eat real food!” Paco chanted once loudly into the humid air.  “No, you idiot,” Manny said. “We eat real food as opposed to what Paco, sneakers? Ugh, you’re either stupid or poor man.  Manny would often get angry at the difference in etiquette and class the two cousins shared. I remember an especially balmy summer afternoon spent in Manny’s trailer when, like a snap of a wet towel, Manny’s voice pierced the still air, “Paco, Throw your dirty toilet paper in the TOILET, NOT the trash can.  We can afford the water that’s used to plunge our refuse out to the sewage.  STOP putting your shitty tissues in our waste bin. Arghh,” Manny sighed under the newly sprouted layer of Ralph Machio peach fuzz that was sprinkled atop his glistening upper lip. 

 

Paco rarely said anything in retort but he was always the first to rush into a new subject, this time by darting off into a full out race to the mango forests.  By the time our panting, timid bones collapsed at the large, whitewashed, soft concrete wall our mouths were already sapped, so dry that the lack of liquid began to actually form a vacuum, sucking our swollen lips into our teeth.  “I need water,” I heaved.  “Re-ee-lax Gregorio,” let’s just drink the Mangos.  And with that, Paco took his position; one knee digging into the slippery grass, one foot directly in front pressing its toes against the dirt so that he had the leverage to toss us over the large creamy pock holed wall. 

 

Once over, we pretended as if we were on secret missions sent exclusively by Mellissa and MaryAnn Hill, the golden-blonde twin girls; the “Terrible Two” of the Palmetto region. We acted as if they sent us into the groves, which were now the jungles of Western Malaysia, because of our keen knowledge of thievery and expertise of the area.  Diving one after the other, we tucked and rolled over the small hedges that were delicately pruned by the elderly couple at the end of one of the mango rows. We knelt and somersaulted past sprinklers and over lawn chairs.  Being as it was broad daylight the neighbors could in fact see us fairly easily regardless of the fact that we thought we were in our “stealth modes”, and they probably did not see us as jungle commandos. In fact, with the overall growing adult stature of Paco, coupled with the way we were pitifully trying to elbow crawl our way under a rusted, see-through remnant of a John Deere tractor,  it is doubtful that we resembled anything but three handicapped children, one evident by his enormous cranium.  Either that or we possibly just looked like three very gay boys, as Manny could not contain his gleeful “eeks” of excitement as he skipped, and I; playfully wrestling Paco and giggling with an exaggerated pair of lips, due to my flick from Paco.  After the entire situation unfolded in front of me I quickly grabbed Paco up by his armpit, reached for Manny and held his mouth as he laughed wildly in his prepubescent shrieking.

           

After reaching up to the sun, through the greedy slithering fingers of the mango branches, to the fleshy plumpness of the juicy ruby jewel, we grabbed the last of our haul for the day.  We hadn’t been seen and we were lucky to have brought several plastic Publix bags with us because we had more than we could hold in our young palms.  Manny caught my eye and we both knew exactly where we were headed; The Corner Market off Highway US1.  Paco grabbed 4 mangoes and said he was done for the day; that his dinner was almost ready.  I can still smell the nightly dinner from Paco’s trailer.  It was a pungent mixture, an olio of stale tortillas, beans cooked inside the can, steaming wilted roughage and a hint of fabric softener as its aroma blanketed our damp summer air while it wafted from the laundry machines in the center of the trailer park.

 

We were really on a roll tonight!  “1 Mango for a buck or 3 Mangoes on sale for two,” Manny and I would belt out to the audience of customers as they exited the convenience store.  “Come on ma'am, this is what I have to sell for school books, ma’am, please?” Manny connived and begged to an elderly woman with jet black hair and cherry red lipstick.  As she swayed over to Manny you had to feel a sense of guilt for taking advantage of someone so clueless that she was still convinced another facelift or lip injection could stave off death for another year and allow her to walk around in a tight leopard print leotard today without attracting the attention of a pimp, or more likely, a pallbearer.

 

Manny approached the drooping octogenarian to reach for the $5.00 bill she was holding out when a hand slapped down onto Manny’s frail tan wrist.  “Okay, Ma'am, sorry, move along.  I know these guys.  They stole this fruit and they don’t have a license to sell anything…anywhere,” the large blue crested officer shouted, nearly to himself but loud enough for all to hear.  “Come on MAANNYYY,” the officer said in a mockingly wimpy voice as he must have heard me say his name subconsciously moments before.  The officer stood with Manny’s elbow up high in between his massive Index and Thumb fingers and tossed the two remaining bags of mangos into the dumpster with a flick of the other hand.  The officer’s name was DelRindo and he was a very large Italian alpha-male type with a permanent five o’clock shadow underneath a thick black moustache as wide and dark as the back of a chalkboard eraser. I pushed off against the reaching giant’s hand and took off running down the dark alley behind the store. When faced with the police everyone is free to run away, even when their apprehended accomplice has no way out. At least, I think that was how I justified it to him.

   

 

As I walked back to my trailer I caught a glimpse of police lights in the distance.  I approached slowly and to my horror I could now tell that the police were in front of Manny’s small trailer, his parents talking with an officer outside as Manny sat somewhere out of sight.  At the time I could only think of running but just as I positioned myself to make a break for it a large hand grasped me by the collar.  The hand belonged to a drunk that lived on the streets outside of the park who was referred to simply as “Orange”, an implication of the hair that once sat on his now bare head.  Orange hated Manny and I for some reason and always lumped me into the group when he threatened to call immigration on us.  “Here’s the other one,” Orange said in a muffled voice.  He dragged me over to the nearest officer and everything that happened after that remains a soft blur in my memory.

           

 

 

 

 

Part 2: Cream Always Rises To The T.O.P.S.

 

 

 

 

 Two weeks had passed and given our long record of fights and disobedience in Palmetto Elementary the authorities figured that Manny and I would be better off if we were separated.  Manny’s parent’s moved shortly after and I never heard from him again. I was put into a special program called T.O.P.S.  The school bus was significantly smaller than the normal long yellow buses as it came to pick me up at 7:00am in front of my house.  “See, they are coming just for you,” my mother said in a cheerful tone to lift my spirits.  When my previous school’s principal had told her of the news a week earlier, all she could do was lower and shake her head as tears fell to the ground.  “I just don’t know what to do with him,” she had told the principal as he gently patted her back.  It was slightly drizzling as the bus came to a slow halt. The shrieking of the wet brakes pierced the air as a loud hydraulic pump lowered the steps to allow me to enter.

           

A frail black man with a weathered Miami Dolphins cap nodded at me and gestured for me to climb aboard the rank vehicle.  I waved goodbye to my mother and took in the breath of what seemed to be a mixture of old vomit and crazy glue that the bus had to offer.  There were only about six other children on the bus and each seemed to be afflicted with some kind of condition or another.  One, heavily medicated child, sat hunched over his lunchbox with chocolate milk drooling from the oversized braces he had newly acquired to correct his bucked teeth.  The small girl behind him sat beside a large rusted walker and just to her left was a small kid of seven or eight laughing hysterically at the ceiling.  There was an eerie presence on the bus, much like one would feel if they had strolled down the halls of a prison’s mental ward.  “What the hell is this,” I thought.  “This isn’t where I belong.” 

 

Just as I was convinced that the bus was inhabited only by the creepy and retarded, a small red headed boy motioned for me to take a seat next to him.  He looked fairly normal, the bright red bangs dangling just over the top of his brow.  He had a Metallica shirt on that did nothing to hide the short purple scars that lined his forearms.  “Hi, I’m Mike,” he said with an arrogant tone.  “These kids are a bunch of fags” he claimed.  I could only nod with agreement as he promised to show me the ropes.  Just as I was getting relaxed and warming my feet on the large black grate at the bottom of the seat Mike looked over at me and smiled downwards.  I noticed he was holding a small firework and a book of matches.  “You dare me to throw this at Henry,” he asked, obviously referring to the bus driver.  “Uh no thanks, I just got arrested for that,” I said.  I don’t know why I lied, perhaps to sound tough, when in fact I was actually in trouble for something far worse than fireworks.  “Ha I’m just kidding man.  I wouldn’t do that,” Mike giggled.  Breathing out a sigh of relief I smiled and turned over to look at the girl with the walker, who had now taken up the art of spitting into the air

and letting it slap her in the forehead.  “Crack!!!” the sound rang in my ears as I searched for the cause.  “This kid did it,” Mike said as he pointed at me.  “What the fuck,” Henry screamed as the bus turned and came to a screeching halt.  Henry stomped back through the bus and just as I prepared for him to yell in my direction he grabbed Mike by the collar and yanked him over the front of the seat, Mike’s feet scraped the top of the ceiling as he cartwheeled down to the ground.  The sight was horrifying, as I was not used to an authoritative figure being able to physically touch a student.  The bus was quiet now, except for the laughing boy, as Henry started up the bus and headed to our final destination.  What the hell could that kid possibly be laughing at, I thought to myself.  Was this somehow funny or had this place actually forced him to crack?

           

The school itself was an attachment to a much larger much more “normal” school.  Our section was set in the back with large signs over the doors connecting the normal school to ours reading; “These doors to remain locked at all times”.  Large overhead lights, similar to the ones found in meat packing facilities, illuminated the small building.  Individual cubicles lined the rooms and opened into a linoleum slated “play room” decorated with board games from floor to ceiling.  Directly above the door sat an immense wooden sign, the letters appearing to be handcrafted.  The sign read, “Teachers Outreach Program for Students”.  They would make us repeat and remember these words as if to enforce the idea that our parents had in fact known exactly what was taking place in this program.  A large portly lady named Mrs. Raburn took my hand and showed me the way to my “desk area”.  “Oh what a strong grip you have,” she said to me in a patronizing tone.  I smiled and continued following her.  Everyday went as follows:

 

 

 

Daily Activities/Schedule

 

730 am: First Bell/Private time

800 am-1030 am: Studies

1030 am-1100 am: Private time

1130 am-1230 pm: Studies

1230 pm-130 pm: Lunchtime

130 pm-400 pm: Studies

400 pm-430 pm:  Private time/Last Bell

 

 

Our studies consisted of hand held cassettes of pre-recorded instructions on basic subjects.  There was a misconception about “private time” as this was the time when we were forced to interact with the other children.  I enjoyed these times but the others, like “Fire-starting Kenneth”, wanted to be left to his own accord.  These days were the longest in my memory.  Every once in a while you would hear a commotion through your thinly padded cardboard cubicle but it usually only lasted a few minutes; the hollering of a mischievous student usually silenced into mysterious moans and cries.  Other than those painfully frightening moments, the hours acted as days as I listened with a bore to Senora Lopez’s instructions on the possessive forms of “Hablar”. 

           

Three months had passed without incident during my stay at T.O.P.S. when I began noticing the change in myself.  The bus trips in the morning were the worst as I remember staring blankly out the window at lives passing by.  I watched as a young man took in the mail at the front of his doorstep loosely holding a cup of coffee in his hand.  The group of children waiting at a bus stop, the old woman pulling up her stockings as she approached the bakery, “Oh God,” I thought.  “How I wish I could trade places with any one of these people.”  The sky seemed brighter outside these windows, the air a bit crisper.  These were the low times. I looked up at the spring-loaded levers on each side of the window and decided that I would jump out at the next stop and keep running until I forgot everything about this situation.   But…I never got up. 

 

That day at school I kept more to myself than normal.  The smell of the room was like a sharp knife into my heart and the tears that I usually only reserved for being beaten up by Paco, now fled onto my desk with a calming regularity.  It was 10:30 and time for “private time” when I approached the Air Hockey table that lay on the ground legless.  My dear friend Mike said that he would play and I reluctantly agreed.  The score was tied when Mike ran up with the puck and threw it fiercely at my nose.  My eyes watered up immediately as I took off and ran for him.  I threw punch after punch into his cheek bones and stomach before being pulled off by two security officers.  The two of them threw me back against the front wall.  I landed on the floor with a thud as they began to approach again.  I held up my small palms to protect my face and let out a small whimper.  One man picked me up and led me out the door by the collar of my shirt.  The other kids had been instructed to go back to their cubicles as I was taken away.  They stopped just outside the doors and the two of them each grabbed one of my arms.  They both then pulled them up and forced my arms back over my head, my face squished into the wall.  My throat was at an awkward position as I let out a cry, “STTAWWWPPP”.  They proceeded until the back of my hands touched the wall that my face sat against.  “Are you gonna be good?,” they questioned.  I told them yes as they let me collapse onto the floor.  When I got back to my cubicle all I could do was stare at the dull gray desktop and massage my throbbing shoulders.  I did not cry as I was honestly too afraid too. 

           

When I got home I didn’t tell my mother but she knew something was wrong when I ran directly past her and into the back lot of the trailer.  She rushed outside and turned me around; I cringed under the grasp.  “What is it,” she pleaded.  All that came out of my mouth was a long hard cry as I reached for her and buried my face into her arms.  That night she looked at my back, which was now covered from shoulder to waist in deep purple bruises.  At seeing this, my mother followed my lead and cried deeply, falling asleep with me in her arms on the couch. She knew there was nothing left for her to do.  The police had taken me away.  In all sense of the meaning; they owned me.  I was stuck.

           

I awoke the following morning to the sound of my mother’s voice on the phone.  I figured she had called the school and told them how outraged she was.  Looks like that’s the end of T.O.P.S., I thought to myself, but to my great dismay she told me to get ready for the bus.  Everything seemed to be the same as I waited outside with my mother but today she said something different.  “Don’t eat too much, I am going to take you out for lunch,” she said holding a used Kleenex tightly in her hand.  I was so mad at her for sending me back to this place that I didn’t even respond to her with an answer. 

           

When I walked past the security officers, the larger of the two peered off into the corner behind me, the other; a sneering grimace beginning to open on his face. 12:30 came so slowly that day as I looked up to finally see my mom walk up to me in her long oversized burgundy cargo jacket.  She was looking around with precise examination as she told me to get my things packed.  I walked past the large doors and sidestepped Mrs. Rayburn, the  obese, angry black mediator with the tightly wound hairdo that dripped clear solution down her temples as she spoke in the afternoons. I walked under the wooden T.O.P.S. sign as I made my way to the parking lot with my mother.  As we sat down in the warm car I noticed that my mother’s face was swollen, her hair cropped to the side, as if she had been crying for hours into the silence of a pillow.  She started the car and drove fast as she asked me where I wanted to eat.  “McDonald’s,” I said with excitement as I felt a huge weight lifted off my small body, a symptom always felt when leaving the T.O.P.S’s program.  A McDonald’s appeared in the distance but my mother made no indication of stopping.  “What are you doing,” I pleaded as we passed by it quickly on our right. 

 

My mother did not answer and remained quiet for the next twenty minutes as we pulled onto US1 and kept driving.  I was infuriated with her disregard towards me.  She acted as if I was not even in the car until we approached a tiny run down bus station.  “What are we doing here,” I asked, seriously having no idea what was going on.  “You’re going to be staying with your father in Washington D.C. for a while,” she said with a quiet whimper as my uncle approached in the distance.  “What’s he doing here,” I questioned with an angry persistence.  My Uncle Tim greeted me and handed my mother a large blue ticket, the same size as a travel brochure as he quickly alerted her, “Hurry up, they could be looking for him”. 

 

They both proceeded to walk to a large metallic grey bus just outside the rusty-hinged depot doors.  My Uncle motioned for me to step onto the black rubber lined steps of the bus as I turned around to question my mother.  She was standing behind my Uncle now, the tears running down her face and onto her jacket.  I had no idea what was going on as I felt my uncle’s hand pat me on the back in order to speed things up.  I walked slowly down the corridor of the bus as my eyes followed my mother through the windows and found an empty seat in the back.  I sat down halfway and looked out the window again just as the bus began to move.  My mother pulled away from my Uncle at the last minute and yelled up to me, “I love you sweetie, don’t be afraid.”  My uncle regained his grip on her and pulled her close as she pressed her nose into his chest and cried.  This image was burned into my eyes as we pulled away from the station.  “What did it mean that I was going to live with my dad?  I don’t even know my dad.  And where is Washington D.C.?”  A sudden wave of panic overwhelmed me as I again took refuge by looking out the window at the people we passed by, wishing I could trade places with any one of them.  “I’m getting off at the next stop and I’m never gonna stop running,” I said to myself.

 

But again, I never got up. 

 

 

 

 

 

Prologue:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After I got on the bus the police soon approached my mother at the station.  What she had done was illegal.  A polite, fancy attired, black woman; in her mid to late forties that I had met on the bus, had ironically, worked for the Dade County School System.  She told me that she wasn’t allowed to “hear what I was saying” after I had I told her where my mother had just taken me from. “But,” she whispered under a gentle smile. “Your mother must love you very much to have done this for you. Very risky. Gregory, Don’t look back”. 

 

When I had arrived in Washington D.C. I had to enroll in private schools in the outlying suburbs so as my name could not be tracked or inputted through any public registration systems. Somehow I had become a young, awkward Jason Bourne, if Jason Bourne had began his career stealing plastic green ninja turtles and had ultimately been trying to escape from a detention center for half-wits and amateur firestarters. But content or not, I was a boy who had to figure out where this new life would take him. 

 

My mother’s tears would never fully dry over the years as she couldn’t help but think that she had failed as a mother, that she had abandoned her child.  One day, years after that bus depot, I would stand before her as a man and whisper some very simple but powerful truths into her ear, so that she could finally see, with clear and bright eyes, and realize that she hadn’t failed me at all; that she had saved me.  That she had saved my life.

 

I would have ended up in prison, or much worse, if I had stayed in that school or stayed in the trailer park; as they were both training and recruitment centers for professional criminals.  I would never have met my favorite, heartless, manic ex-marine of a father, but; I would have also never learned how to rely on myself and to strive for success on my own feet of determination. Truly though, if I hadn’t been freed, I never would have met the friends I still have to this day. I never would have had the chance to graduate college or get fired from a job as a test proctor due to my inappropriately loud snoring.  I never would have made it to the walkway upon my spiritual path nor would I have had a chance for a nice home, the comfortable security of strong finances, nor would I have met the woman that I would share my heart with and ultimately the rest of my life.  If I hadn’t faced what I had faced then I would not have a compassionate heart or a sympathetic embrace today towards friends and strangers alike. 

If you hadn’t unlocked the doors to my privately sinking harbor as it sank deeper into the mud, and managed to lift my arms to reach those high branches of the treeline, I never would have made it out.  I would have drowned before my life had had a chance to start.  Thank You.  Thank you for loving me more than I had loved myself.  You fought alone to save my life when no one cared enough to even notice that I was in danger of losing it.  Had you not done these things I never would have afforded the luxury of flying you out to San Diego to show you where your selfless gift had taken me.  But most importantly; I never would have been able to personally read this story to you tonight and say, "Thank you...thank you so much, with all my heart, for simply being my mother".

 

 

 

 

The End...Before The Beginning.