The Invisible Sign

The Beginning of Knowledge

When something hurts, we ask, why? What’s wrong with me?

That simple question, “What’s wrong with me?” has followed me through childhood, adolescence, school, adult life, marriage, even through religion.

There isn’t another person I can look at without wondering how I compare to them. Are they normal? What is normal? Am I normal?

It is that torment that prompted my search for God. Not just any god, as there are countless gods, but for The God, The Creator of all things. The animate, the inanimate, and in between.

Long before I knew what questions to ask, I was already trying to understand why people did what they did, why the world is the way it is, and why I never seemed to fit comfortably within it.

The War To End All Wars — Did Not!

At the beginning of the 1950s, born in the hills of Pennsylvania, I was the seventh of seven children, fated by time and circumstance to sleep with my parents for the first five years of my life. 

By the time I was relegated to a small mattress on the sewing room floor, I had observed things that kindled desires that I was incapable of controlling or understanding.

Although not recognized at the time, I realized much later that those few years set the course of my life in a direction very different from most children.

While most children filled their imaginations with castles, giants, wizards, and witches, mine was focused upon deviant adult behavior, and the exposure at such an early age not only made me aware of things that other children never noticed, but it also made me vulnerable to sexual predators.

Like A Shark Smells Blood

That voyeuristic curiosity was like a beacon, and it was not long before another close relative took advantage of it, after which I developed habits and compulsions that followed me throughout life.

What was there to understand? I was simply a child adapting to the world as it was presented to me. There was no right or wrong to it. I was never told, “Don’t tell anyone.”

What was there to tell? In my world, everybody was doing the things that I’d watch my mother and father do. So, what was wrong with it?

Only decades later would I begin to understand how profoundly those experiences shaped my thinking, my relationships, my struggles, and my understanding of myself.

Our family had no knowledge of psychology, trauma, addiction, or emotional development, and consequently did what seemed normal, and in my world, sex and alcohol were normal.

Just Normal People

Looking back now, it is difficult to separate the normal from the abnormal.

When the so-called “normal” people get together with the so-called abnormal people, which do you think sways more toward the other’s behavior?

I’ve seen it happen many times!

There was a nymphomaniac sister-in-law, a homosexual brother, vulgar brothers-in-law who thought they were porn-stars, one of whom molested his own children, and predatory extended relatives, and predatory neighbors.

As I recall, nearly every adult’s behavior contradicted what they expected of the children around them.

“Don’t do as I do, do as I say!” Was their mantra.

As a child, I did not judge any of it. How could I? What could I possibly base my judgment upon at that age? Children merely absorb. The tragedy is that they often absorb things their parents and others never intended to teach.

Cuss Words and Christmas Names

Where was morality, decency, and propriety?

Where was God? Where was religion? 

The closest thing our family had to religion was Christmas carols; beyond that, Christ and God were rarely mentioned unless someone shouted, “JESUS CHRIST!” or “God damnit!” when they were angry.

There was only one church, actually a Cathedral, within view of our house, but I was not aware of its function. It stood on a hill across town. To me, it was just another building.

Religious association was never mentioned. The fat man of Christmas and his flying reindeer would have cooked in our coal furnace, and a baby in a what? Mang—ger! Never heard of it!

Adults and Mentors

Still Unable to read or write, I entered the first grade just before I turned seven years old.

With six older siblings, my presence was, more or less, that of a puppy. They spoke, behaved, and indulged as if I was oblivious.

That older association and thinking made it virtually impossible to adjust to or fit in with children my own age, because they weren’t.

Sadly, I was quickly becoming aware that my view of the world was skewed—an adolescent mind with adult desires and tendencies.

It wasn’t long before I began searching for someone, anyone, who shared similar interests, and as you would suspect, they were all older than me.

Dear Old Dad — No Disrespect Intended.

When he wasn’t drunk, according to what I was told, he was a loving father, but he was certainly not a mentor, and the things I’ve learned about his father, well, he was far worse.

Consequently, my memories of Dad are few, and those few I do keep are not pleasant.

More a stranger than a father, he showed affection during his rare appearances, yet I never grew close to him. Having not seen for weeks, or maybe months — I don’t know. In any case, I must have become accustomed to his absence.

What little I knew of him, according to my older brother, was only after he had destroyed himself with alcohol, after the tremens began, and he grew increasingly distant and violent.

Dad Died In August, 1958

He was gone for months with no one having told me beforehand where he was or that he was ill. Then, one summer afternoon, Mom came home and told me that he’d died, and we had to arrange his funeral.

I was six years old.

Although I didn’t realize it until many years later, growing up without him led me to seek other mentors. Not knowingly, but subconsciously.

Personally speaking, I believe I selected some decent people, men and women.

“There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life”.

The worst part was that his death meant little or nothing to me. I knew so little of him, that I felt nothing. It was my first encounter with death, and unlike Prince Hamlet, it held no significance. There were no tears, no overwhelming grief or emptiness.

Life just went on, business as usual, and not many weeks after his death, I began grade school.

Perhaps there are times that the absence of feeling says as much as grief itself — I don’t know.

Personality Development

Not long after Dad died, Mom had to find work, and as a result, I spent much of my childhood under the supervision of those from whom I learned so much of what torments me.

Consequently, school and I never developed a healthy relationship, and I advanced from grade to grade, as my mother put it: “By the skin of my teeth.” 

Today, there would likely be a medical diagnoses! Back then, the only diagnosis for it was ‘spoiled brat, and I was treated accordingly.

In the midst of it all, however, I discovered something beautiful: the hills and woods of Pennsylvania.

My Mom Needs Her Mom

By the time I reached third grade, we were living near my grandparents, not far from a place called The Buckhorn, deep in the hills and away from the city.

My assumption is, with the loss of her husband, Mom wanted to be nearer to her parents. Her dad had a stroke, and a house near them was available to rent.

So off we flew to join nature and find paradise.

Mom helped raise five younger brothers who spent their lives in those woods. She knew there was nothing more dangerous than a rabid chipmunk, and maybe a snake or a bear now and then, but nothing to worry about.

Treated again like an only child, and despite being only 8 or 9 years old, I spent days and nights alone in the forest. Camping, hiking, building cabins, being Davey Crockett (but without killing bears).

The forests became my playground, my refuge, and my sanctuary. It seems that I wandered through it endlessly as my memory and my desires remain filled with it.

That was as close to God as my childhood ever brought me.

Nature made sense. The trees, streams, and animals made sense. People did not.

A New House Close To Religion

Very sadly, somewhere near the end of my fourth year of grade school, Mom purchased the first and only house she would ever own — in the city, needing to move closer to work.

We moved again, leaving paradise behind.

At first I wanted to run away, or live with Grandma and Grandpa. I longed to be back in the woods, back in the silence and the world that made sense.

Dreading the thought of summer ending and school beginning, I hated the city and being near those children I began school with.

The Spirit Come Calling!

Accustomed to rising early, I walked out the front door one somber Saturday morning while the others were still asleep.  

Directly across the street from the new house was a Jewish synagogue.

At the end of the block, on the opposite corner, was a Greek Orthodox church, and not far beyond was the First Baptist church, and a Methodist church, not to mention that huge cathedral that still sat atop “Gospel Hill,” overlooking and haunting the city.

Suddenly, religion seemed to be everywhere.

Walking past the synagogue, I heard singing. Feeling alone and quite lost, I decided to peek inside.

As I entered, and a man hurried toward me, placed a kippah on my head, shoved a siddur into my hand, and escorted me to a seat.

He said, “Sit here, and say nothing.”

So I did, and somewhere within all that ceremony and ritual, something was stirred inside me that would occupy the next seventy years of my life —

I began to think about God.

Proverbs 9:10

Although there are numerous translated renderings of this verse from Proverbs, I chose the following to represent this chapter:

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. [BLB]