My father was a survival expert:

Deserts, swamps, mountains,  jungles.

Hunger and thirst were trials inflicted

To toughen up his men for the real thing.

His signature line was:

The bugs will get you faster than the bullets!

Dad’s harsh regime saved many lives

In World War II combat arenas.

My father was my hero.

During the war

My mother bore him four girls.

Their first-born had died of cancer,

A girl, then aged seven,

A long, slow death, pre-war.

She raised us four single-handedly,

With only coupons and pennies to spend.

The home front was pregnancy and popcorn,

Complicated jigsaws, Bing Crosby, the BBC,

Newsy letters,

Fear,

And hope.

My mother was my hero.

Bugs and babies  …  babies and bugs

That was the relentless norm for five years,

Until a rosy Yorkshire nurse was assigned to

Jamaica while Dad was posted there too.

Under the musky Jamaican moon

Dad fell in love like a puerile schoolboy,

And rapturously – recklessly -

Threw the rest of us overboard.

My mother wasn’t having it.

She rallied family support from all quarters.

So Dad’s affaire d’amour was squelched

And he came back to us,

To do his duty for the family he already had.

My mother never forgave him.

Hatred turned her heart to gall,

But she knew her duty.

So began the subtle campaign

To emotionally castrate my father.

I was seven.

I cannot erase the tortured years of

Labyrinthine bitterness between my parents;

Weary years when I had to decide

What to see –what to feel – what to ignore.

I was only a child

And all I could do was my best.

Weaving  through the maze

Of adult suffering I tried to make sense -

To find sunshine in the frightening

Cellars of my parents’ pain.

At nineteen, I bounced into college,

The family rooms closed behind me,

A parting mutually understood,

And respected.

I knew my duty.

Demons pursued me into marriage,

Wreaking havoc in my dreams,

Demanding reparation for adult confidences

Filtered through a child’s mind.

I ran from these fiends, panic-stricken.

I am a good person, I told myself.

I deny the power of hatred and revenge.

And yet, I screamed in the darkness.

My black dreams ground their razor heels

Into my soul, raising me in fury from sleep,

Fists clenched with bloody nails,

My heart striking against my ribs.

And still … still … I refused confrontation.

I would not believe I was capable

Of such unconscionable rage.

But - from the monsters of your mind

There is no escape except within yourself.

The child you were

Is the child you will always be.

One night I was gripped with a revulsion

So horrifying that, at last, I rebelled.

I hurled myself  against the ghastlies holding

My subconscious hostage.

I self-inflicted a mental break-up.

I survived, and became wiser.

If You, the adult, will embrace You, the child,

Without guilt or shame,

The child shall offer again its innocence,

Trusting wholly,  reborn.

Then can You merge, Yourself and Yourself,

Into One person -

Liberated.

I am my own hero.

Cynthia Buell Thomas