So Far Ahead. So Far Behind.

It had been a while since Luke had been in formal schooling. It was 35 years to be exact. Societal changes over that time were too numerous to mention. Child development research was its infancy when he was born in 1962. And now Luke was about to get his 60 orbits done around the sun!

“Can I hack it? Will Mr. Davies like me”, Luke thought to himself.

Luke knew he was tentative and conflicted. It was more than going back to school at his age. It was that he always seemed to be an outsider. He learned differently growing up. He was an auto-didact. No one in his family knew where he learned to read. It just seemed that he did it. He didn’t attend kindergarten yet in first grade he was asked to attend spelling bees in the upper classes. He felt out of sorts doing this. School always seemed to be a challenge. While he loved school, he often seemed lost. Few teachers saw him though Miss Sandor, the teacher’s assistant, secretly passed to him a copy of “The Hobbit” in fourth grade. The few times he was allowed to go on his own in his studies separate from the rest of class was when he felt at home. Formal settings were also uncomfortable for him. It’s in these settings that he would feel grimy and feral.

Luke shook himself out of his reverie. He looked forward to his child development”class. While he didn’t know what Mr. Davies was like, Luke knew that he himself loved kids. As a yoga teacher, Luke had a way about them. He felt more comfortable with them than adults. The kids seemed to know this intuitively. They loved roughhousing with Luke. They loved how he let them push back against him physically in a myriad of ways. Luke reveled in this connection. He knew the importance of touch and the necessity of children knowing the increasing limits of their strength as they developed. Where their body ended and the rest of the world began.

Luke began to delve into the context of his development in preparation for Mr. Davies. “I’m almost 60 orbits done” he told himself. “Again, I’m one of the different ones in the class. I’ve got a tremendous bundle of experience. I’ll lay that bundle like a grid over what Mr. Davies has to say and see how all this experience stacks up. But how will I do that?”

Luke furrowed his brow and though until his forehead muscles turned pink and began to hurt. Then he got it! Since he’d meet Mr. Davies in two days, he had to define his development context like a poem.To Luke, this meant giving the maximum amount of information in the minimum amount of words. This meant to rely on the dominant context and the dominant “first” memories relative to attachment feelings of closeness and distance. The lines of the poem would seem wandering at first. To Luke, this was okay. In development, a baby, a toddler, and a child seemingly wanders nowhere as he or she moves tentatively towards an anchor.

“That’s okay,” Luke thought again as he held the memory of him in first grade fitting varied colored animal shapes into the appropriate spots. The spots embedded into the black plastic boards. Spots like a marina slip where the sailboats could dock. Sailboats at home with their others. Luke’s forehead could now relax.

“This is where I will end”, Luke thought.

And so, he then began!

“You were so quiet in the womb,” Mom said.

“I was worried. I was working so hard in the fields”

I fell into the hands of a doctor.

Doctor Dimas. A man who had made a moral choice to do underground abortions.

My family later found out and deemed him to be bad.

I was the youngest of ten in a family of twelve.

Don’t call me the baby. I am the youngest.

Farmers we are. I played in dirt and mud.

Kindergarden, sandboxes, and Seseme Street are communist.

I am sure I was doted on by sisters.

Prayed over my mom.

Looked on strangely by my brothers.

Within earshot of my dad’s outbursts of rage.

Chaos abounds. Mom has got so much to do.

So many FACES looking at me. So many HANDS touching. SO MUCH STIMuLATION.

Keep it together. Keep it together. Keep it together.

Soon, there’s more prayer and less touch.

I pooped on newspapers laid out on kitchen floor.

I was terrified I fall in sitting on the toilet for the first time.

I threw a bottle through a window and was spanked. Spanked the one and only time.

My father carried me to be bed holding me against his chest

Warm and close. My heavy head resting on his shoulder.

I remember. I remember. I remember.

My first dream was with a crone.

In another dream a had a choice.

A choice between family safety and toys.

I chose toys. In doing so, I chose the nightmares.

I woke mom crying months later.

“I keep having these dreams”, I say

“Pray to God,” she said.

So, above ground

The Ticklish People became my terrors.

Underground, they were my family.

I remember. I remember. I remember.

I gurgled with joy as I ran and jumped

Into my mother’s arms when came home.

This was our game. Our game alone.

She was happy. Her eyes were clear.

I could see her love.

I remember. I remember. I remember.

I hid from my Italian aunts, uncles and cousins.

I hid from the fireworks exploding on the TV screen.

At the beginning of the “Wonderful World of Disney”

Walt was my uncle. I cried when he died.

I’d just turned four.

I held my blue dickie when I was carried to bed

The sky-blue blanket with the faux-silk edge.

I held my Smokey the Bear close.

Smokey with the silver badge, brown belt, and denim jeans.

I danced in front of my parents as they watched Lawrence Welk.

And learned my prayers like everyone else.

As Luke left the little boy in first grade so happily fitting the colored animals into the plastic, so happily sitting in front of the colorful lunchboxes orderly placed side by side with the games stacked nicely underneath, and so happily hearing the green curtains noisily side shut on metal tracks signaling that the first, first, first class is about to begin, he thought,

“In some ways, I was so far ahead and, in some ways, I was so far behind”

Mr. Davies liked Luke. What Mr. Davies had to say was congruent with what Luke reflected on looking back at his development in his early orbits. Luke felt that he was being seen and that his experience was being validated. “You can never learn less, Luke. Because of that, you are always filling the gaps.”

Hearing what Mr. Davies said made Luke realize that Mr. Davies was a real good teacher.