A silver lining is our consolation in a difficult situation. Its the bright side of things, as they say. We're all familiar with the saying, but we're also aware that to do so is a far more challenging exercise, and often a futile one if your prone to pessimism. While I wouldn't call myself a pessimist, I've been called "intense" by more than just a couple of friends and family members (to say nothing of my husband's impressions...). In fact, I believe a therapist has gone so far as to let me know I could bring it down a notch or two from time to time. (The subtlety of therapists is not wasted on me. I sweat the small stuff ALL the time). So finding the silver lining has become a practice I engage in almost daily; one that begins long, long ago... before I realized what I was doing, and before I knew that what I was doing was becoming self-aware (being "woo-woo", as my mom would say).
To give it proper context, the summary of my childhood and adolescence needs to be established in a few paragraphs. I've always said that if I was into media exploitation, this would make a great Oprah show; suffice it to say, that after four invitations to the Dr. Phil show from my ex-husband, I'm not into a public display of my family's or my own inadequacies and you'll never find me in the archives of those programs.
I was, and I am, loved deeply by both of my parents. My parents loved each other for many years. Their marriage ended when I was 7 years old. I had a sister who was 8 and a brother who was 4 and a bike that was uber cool- it had gears, lots of them. The details of that marital dissolution would not come to my awareness, nor should it have, until I was a young adult. My father packed up his Chevy Chevette (which he would keep for about a hundred years and later give to my sister and me to drive when we were old enough) and moved back to his home town of Washington, Pa. The drive between Erie and Washington was about 3 hours and on weekends we made the trek with minor distress. There was this one incident involving a banana and a bush that we watched from the car with mild horror during a weekend pick up or drop off, but the details elude me now and mere humor hangs around the memory.
Years of moving around the country followed the divorce. My mother met the man that would later secretly (yes, I do mean that) become her second husband, and a midnight Amtrak Express ride to California ensued. I was going into the third grade around that time, which is just north of being a "kid"and way south of being a teen. I spent a lot of time trying to perfect the mature thing if I thought someone was watching and playing with dolls and stuffed animals when I thought no one was. It would be years before I found my solace on a soccer field and learned to get out my aggression, tension and emotions physically.
This man we'll call G had five children, three of which were traveling on the train with us to California. To pass the three day travel time, we made an audio cassette tape that we titled "Murder on the Amtrak Express". It kept us out of trouble and away from the watchful eyes of the conductor and my mom. I vividly remember feeling the distance spreading between me and Pennsylvania, dad; recognizing that this was not just a car ride anymore, and wondering why this trip began in the middle of the night... while I didn't know it yet, that audio tape was the first of many silver linings.
That first move to California would lead us to many new places thereafter. From California, we moved to Illinois, and the road trip to get there cost us a dog that ultimately went crazy from the drugs needed to transport him in cramped spaces. From Illinois, it was off to New Mexico.
Somewhere along the way, during a summer stay with my dad, my sister decided that she liked it better in Pennsylvania. Then later, my brother stayed with them too. All of the sudden, I was alone. Not alone as in abandoned, but no longer with my siblings and the people who knew me best. I didn't have my posse anymore.
To say I've condensed and summarized this part of my life is an understatement. To detail this part of my life would be a novel all its own. To let this piece rest as stated, at least one silver lining must be found. While my mom's second husband, G, was not a good husband to her, he brought me an unexpected gift: he gave me a love for the piano and taught me how to appreciate rhythm. I began to play when I was 8 and continued until I went to college. He would drive me to practice and turn on the radio, asking me to find the beat in each song and count it with him. We were human metronomes. I liked those rides. Later, when I would move to Pennsylvania too, my dad would sneak into the room when I would practice and sit and listen to me for hours. If I knew he was there, I couldn't continue, so he learned to be silent and slip in behind me and just sit quietly. That gift was for more than just me.
I can honestly say, looking back, that I can find a silver lining in each place we moved and in each event that occurred (so very many events not written here: there were adopted cats, failed attempts at youthful romance, efforts to become popular by thinking I wanted to be a cheerleader- barf!- lonely nights without my posse, times when I saw too much and understood more than I should about all those moves, awful court dates, and then huge blank spaces in my memory).
Fast forward ...
