I don’t know what woke me up that December night in 1958. But when I did wake up, there was darkness all around me. No breakfast call, no Sister Erica telling me to get up, just darkness. Then I turned over and there at the foot of my bed sat my mother. She was not looking at anything. Just a statue in her perfect commune uniform. Her hair was covered. Her eyes were forward. Her hands were sitting in her lap. Her bare feet were planted on the floor. Like I remember her; not with me, just there. I turned over thinking, “What is she doing here?”
I was barely three years old, and I was already bitter toward my own mother. Most people would find that shocking. But that bitterness didn’t start that night during the bombing that would change our commune forever. Those seeds had been planted much earlier. This was during the first months and years of my life. I learned one of the hardest lessons any child could learn. Even the people who are supposed to love you will leave you alone with your tears.
I don’t remember being four weeks old, but I know what happened. My mother was allowed to bond with me for four short weeks. Then my mother was forced to put me in the commune nursery. And the staff was ordered not to touch me or hold me. I was to be her responsibility alone. But she had duties, meetings, meals with the group. So when I cried, no one came.
I remember hearing my babies cry years later when I became a mother. I was there to hear, I was there to hold. When they cried, I wiped their tears away. Even my voice—they could hear me say, “What is it little one? What do you need?”
But for me, in the nursery, there were other babies who cried, and it stopped. A baby could see a presence passing, but it never stopped and took care of my needs. Rarely someone came by and fed my emptiness. But still I cried, still I needed, and still rarely was I filled. Not always dry and comfortable.
Then came Chicago. My father brought us to his hometown, hoping for a fresh start. But he was also a victim of his past. He came to the commune because he saw a way to break his addiction. He had learned how to work, how to associate with a community that was not the ghetto. But could he protect himself from heroin while taking care of his family? He made the decision to leave and go back to his old lifestyle.
In turn this turned him into an abusive husband and father. When my mother would go to work and leave me with him, he ignored me. Mom found me laying on the floor with no diaper on. She saw dried tears running down my cheeks. This happened on multiple days when she came home from work. My father would be above me on the bed fast asleep. So more proof, I couldn’t trust people to take care of me.
Sometimes in life, we get a glimpse of what we crave. For me, it was my paternal grandmother. She was fluffy and laughed. She intrigued me. From the cold surface to a fluffy body with a heartbeat. A fluffier place than a crib. And when she came close I could feel her love. My mother told me we were close. How can a baby be close to someone? We feel it. We see it in their eyes. Can you imagine being so filled with tears, and then suddenly a feeling of comfort and security? That is what she was. She was there in the same building. She came and went out of our home. When I could feel no one else in the apartment, and she walked in it felt like joy. I loved her smile. She was my first experience in a church. She went to one of those loud churches where they raised their hands and danced and shouted. I enjoyed that noise and excitement. Years later my mother said she was worried about me in such a loud atmosphere. But in my grandmother’s arms she had nothing to worry about. I felt safe. Her buoyancy gave me comfort. I loved it, smiling and clapping my hands.
But something strange happened. That little bit of love and security disappeared. I didn’t know when it all happened, but one day, everything was different. No grandmother, no father and no mother. My mother tells of how close I was with my paternal grandmother. She told me she never let my grandmother say goodbye to me. Just one day we were there and the next gone.
And then I was on a plane. I had my mother close, holding my baby brother, but somehow I felt lost. It was a new experience, and I hate new experiences. They are frightening and hard to understand. The floor is there, but why is the floor so shaky? Kind of like my life, shaky unstable. A loud noise outside, with lots of windows, but doesn’t show where the noise is coming from. I feel safe enough and make it to our next destination with my mom at my side. Even though there is a loud noise and my seat jerked to and fro. We get into a car, with my brother on my mother’s lap and me sitting close beside her. I held onto her arm not knowing where we were headed, with a feeling of something is changed. But what?
I soon found out. My mother pulled me away from her side, and handed my brother over to a strange woman. She sternly maneuvered me away from my mother. And I watched my mother walk down out of my sight. It looked like she was going into a hole outside that window. But of course she was walking down cement stairs, that I would be familiar with for many years. My mother didn’t come back for many days. It seemed like those stairs went down to a lost land, that takes mothers away.
By the time I was three years old, I learned all the lessons a heart needs to protect itself. Crying brings no comfort. Fathers abandon you. Even the people who love you can disappear without warning. And mothers? Even mothers hand you to strangers and walk away.
When I woke up that December night, I saw my mother sitting at the foot of my bed like a statue. Of course, I thought, “What is she doing here?” I had learned not to expect her to really be “there” for me. She was just another person who appeared briefly in my life and then disappeared again.
Years later I would understand what that moment at the top of the stairs really was. The bombing that night would scatter our community and change everything. But for me, the real damage had already been done months earlier, at the top of those cement stairs. That’s where my mother took my hand. She presented my brother and me to our caregiver. Then she walked away down those steps into the commune below. In that moment – though I was too young to understand it – she wasn’t just leaving us. She was handing us over. Choosing a path for us. Resigning her motherhood to a system that would now decide when she could see us, hold us, comfort us. Those seeds of bitterness had been planted long before I could even speak. My mind didn’t understand what was happening, but my heart learned a terrible truth: I was no longer wanted. I had been given away.
But this isn’t where my story ends. It didn’t end at the top of those stairs, and it didn’t end in that bitterness. That little girl who learned she wasn’t wanted? She didn’t stay there.
Our stories can start with no solid ground beneath us: unstable, uncertain, everything shifting, nothing to grab onto. After we see the past, we accept that it happened. But also, we must refuse to let it write our future. We can learn to chose different paths. That little girl one day stood up and said no more to her own pain. She said no more to the legacy that created it. I had my own little family and refused to pass on what had been handed to me. It isn’t about the beginning, but about the journey, and the choices we make. I chose different than my parents.
Other Chapters:
Life Stories: Barefoot to Shoes
Legacy: Three Generations, Three Different Outcomes