After Mom said good night, I tried to lie still on the top bunk in my new bedroom. Shutting my eyes as tight as I could, I hoped in vain that sleep would overtake me. Dad stayed missing that entire school year, and all my thinking made it impossible to relax.
Somewhere in the hazy territory between wakefulness and drowsiness, I saw something in the distance, as if projected on the bedroom’s far wall. I couldn’t make it out at first but it soon came into focus: a large silver machine hovering in the air, whirring softly. From an opening at its front, white ribbon slowly spilled out. Folding over on itself, the ribbon floated through the air. As it wafted downward, its folds and loops revealed shadows underneath. Always at the same steady pace, the ribbon continued to emerge, filling in the space in front of me. It was the ribbon of time, eternal time.
It never stopped.
Dad had told me about infinity, which is more, he said, than googol, more than googolplex. “It’s not even a number,” he told me; “it’s a concept beyond numbers.” Was the universe infinite? Or infinitely finite? My mind reeled as he raised the questions.
But eternity was far more frightening. I thought about time constantly: How little there was to get everything done, how slowly it passed when I thought of my questions that never got answered. Yet if time never stopped, what did anything mean? Fractions no longer made any sense. What did it mean to travel a third of the way somewhere, a tenth, even a hundredth? If time is eternal, you can never get closer to the end. However far you might go, exactly that much more ribbon keeps pouring out, so you’re just where you started. With eternity, there’s no progress, only another day’s futile attempt to get somewhere. Nothing had any meaning against the eternity of time.
Finally I began to drift off. At school, I’d once thrilled whenever my teacher returned another test or assignment. But now, as each day wore on, it felt as though a gauze bandage was wrapping itself around me, insulating me from the world.
Some nights, my head filled with thoughts I couldn’t stop, especially swear words like God damn and hell. A little song repeated itself: darn damn God, darn damn God. No matter how hard I tried, the words kept coming. What would happen if God heard these awful words?
Lying there, trying to calm myself down, I started to wonder whether I’d peed enough. If I tried one more time, squeezing out those last drops, maybe I could finally relax and fall asleep. I hauled myself up from my bunk bed, climbed down the ladder, and walked across the hallway to our bathroom, with its double sinks and aquamarine tile floor. Straining, I made a trickle into the toilet and marched back to bed. But within a few minutes I started wondering whether there might still be a little left, starting the whole process once more. What I didn’t know is that giving in to ruminative thoughts by performing compulsions—peeing to stop the fear that I’d not cleared my system—provides only fleeting relief. In an endless cycle, the obsessive thoughts roar back, ever stronger.
I couldn’t tell Mom how upset I was because she’d get that look on her face letting me know that she couldn’t bear to see me unhappy. I’d never been lonelier in my life. I sometimes felt like smashing things. Didn’t anyone know how hard I was trying? All the pretending was getting harder every day. I finally made up my mind that I just had to find out something about Dad.
During the fall, Mom sat at the kitchen table on a bright afternoon. The sliding glass door overlooked the back yard, revealing our skeletal new trees and the squares of sod that were gradually turning yellow-brown. The house was deathly still. Hesitating, I forced myself to walk toward her.
“Yes, Stevie,” she said, looking at me, “what is it?”
It was now or never. I took a large swallow of air. “Mom, I have a question. Where’s Dad?”
Her smile quickly faded. She didn’t seem angry but her look was plenty serious all the same. Moments ticked by. In her clearest voice she finally spoke up. “Your father is resting in California. We don’t know when he’ll be back.” She held my gaze. “It’s best,” she concluded, “if you ask no more questions.”
I replayed her words in my mind and managed a choked reply. “He’s resting?”
She nodded. That was it. Head down, I walked slowly back upstairs.
I pictured Dad taking lots of naps, keeping his mind fresh for all the books he read and all the ideas he had. I tried to be happy that he was resting, but where in California was he, exactly? Why didn’t we ever hear from him? That evening in bed, the ribbon of time once more unfurled from the machine, softly folding on itself, its flow never ending.
Our third-grade teacher, Miss Searler, told us at the beginning of the school year that this was her first year of teaching. Young, with wide eyes, she had a round face and an eager look that made me want to answer all her questions. After the final bell one afternoon, the kids whooping as they departed, Miss Searler asked me to stay. The empty desks formed straight rows, workbooks lining the shelves. High up was the American flag and beneath it those forest-green vinyl strips featuring print and cursive letters of the alphabet written neatly on them. Handwriting was my worst subject. I bore down hard, really hard, almost snapping the pencil lead as I wrote or drew. Even now, I can still see the ultra-dark letters and words I formed on the lined paper, graphite thick on the page. I can still feel it today, the stab of pain inside my right shoulder blade from all that bearing down, the muscles and tendons permanently knotted.
The afternoon sun shone obliquely through the high window as Miss Searler looked toward me, all the hope in the world on her face. “Steve, I have a question for you.”
“OK,” I replied, hoping this wouldn’t take long so I could get outside.
“Where’s your dad? We haven’t seen him around.”
For a few seconds I stopped breathing. Did she know something? Or was she just curious? Those big eyes of hers: She really wanted an answer. I suddenly remembered that back-to-school night had been the week before, so maybe she was just wondering why he hadn’t been there. Nearly all my classmates had two parents attending.
I swallowed. “Miss Searler, my dad’s in California,” I said, trying to sound assured. “He’s resting there.”
As she pondered what I’d just said, she still smiled but the look in her eyes shifted. Squinting, she tilted her head slightly to the right, her bottom lip starting to push up against her top lip. “Really?” she asked, trying to keep her voice bright, but it was hard with her mouth at this new angle.
“Yeah, that’s what my mom says.”
“All right,” she replied. “But does anyone know when he’ll be back?”
I thought but no answer appeared. “I don’t know,” I said softly.
After an awkward silence, Miss Searler asked about something else, maybe an assignment. I answered woodenly, said good-bye, and walked down the stairs to the playground. For a long while afterward I thought of her expression. That shift in her eyes, the slight tilting of her mouth when her face went from hopeful to doubtful.
I finally told Mom about needing to go to the bathroom each night, as she’d been wondering why I was going back and forth across the hall so much. With a worried look she called our pediatrician and made an appointment with a specialist.
A week later we drove to the offices near downtown. The nurse asked me to put on a pale-green gown. Inside the changing room I took off most of my clothes and put my arms through the thin straps. “No, little boy,” she said when I came out. “It goes the other way. What seems like the back is actually the front. I can help you tie it when you’re ready.” Trying not to feel stupid, I finally got it right but felt really skinny in the gown.
I swallowed some chalky liquid from a paper cup and lay down on a table, with a huge, pale-green x-ray machine looming above. I got moved around after every few pictures, for shots from different angles. I held my breath to make sure the pictures didn’t blur. Finally finished, I got dressed again.
From the car’s back seat during the drive home, I couldn’t think of anything to say to Mom. I looked out at North High Street and the low-slung brick buildings under the slate-gray sky before we turned left, driving past the OSU football stadium toward our house. Next to me I could almost feel those poison balloons hovering, the lethal gas inside pressing for release.
A few days later Mom said that the new doctor had called to say that the x-rays hadn’t shown anything. She looked puzzled, but I wasn’t surprised at all. I’d known that the problem was more in my mind than anywhere else in my body.
Every few weeks Sally and I spent the night at Grandmother’s house. It had long been our haven during those times when, far beyond our knowledge, things were unmanageable at home. Grandmother took us to movies—the Elvis movies she loved or, when she wanted to show us religion, The Ten Commandments, which I thought would never end. Religion was on Grandmother’s mind. In the small anteroom near her bedroom, she lectured to us after Bible readings. One afternoon she delivered her sternest lesson.
“The Bible tells us that there are many things you can do and be forgiven,” she said. “But certain words are the worst. If you take the Lord’s name in vain, you will be eternally damned.” Suddenly frightened, Sally and I asked what that meant. “You will go to hell forever,” she replied with force. “The flames are hotter than anything on earth; the burning would hurt more than you can ever imagine. You can do many things and be forgiven, but you can never take the Lord’s name in vain.”
Stunned, I couldn’t believe it. With those chants and songs I said to myself in bed each night, each one damning God, I was going to end up in hell for eternity. Although I tried not to let my horror show, I was in supreme agony.
The next time Sally and I went to Grandmother’s house, I put my plan into action. Making sure they were busy in the kitchen, I tiptoed upstairs to the anteroom, which looked out over the back yard and the alley beyond. I might lie up there near the radiator if I’d had too much to eat for Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve dinners, but there was no time to rest today. Getting up my courage, I walked straight into Grandmother’s bedroom, finding her Bible with its pebbled, soft-black cover and onionskin pages, lying on the stand near her bed. Sitting at her desk, which smelled of hairbrush and perfume, I looked for the part in the Old Testament about taking the Lord’s name in vain. To my amazement I found the passage within a few minutes. My world reeled. Right there, the Bible stated exactly what Grandmother had said, that taking the Lord’s name was unforgivable. I stared blankly. My only hope was to try even harder in school and at home, which might count for something in the final reckoning. But what good would that do? My fate was sealed.
* * *
During January, after a forlorn Christmas with Dad nowhere to be found, Mom surprised me with a 45 r.p.m. record of a song I liked from the radio, “Big Bad John,” by Jimmy Dean. She’d gone out of her way to buy it. I rushed to put it on the turntable in the family room, as the snow lay thick on the ground outside the windows. I put the vinyl disc on top of the cylinder as the small arm clicked over and pushed the record down onto the rubber circle, the big arm swinging around and dropping down on the lined black grooves. After a mild hiss, the song started for a second or two. Yet suddenly the music stopped, static over static. I tried again but the arm skipped once more.
“Oh, God,” I said with an exasperated sigh. Couldn’t anything go right? But when I looked back I realized that Mom had quietly walked downstairs in the interim, witnessing the scene, her face frozen with disappointment. And here I was taking the Lord’s name in vain, not just lying in bed when I couldn’t help it but on my own, out loud.
Might it be noticed, in the end, how hard I was bearing down at school and at home? Yet in light of my sins, I was certain that none of that mattered.
Years later Mom told Sally and me about her childhood during the Depression, especially the time when she wanted more than anything to get the new board game Monopoly. Grandmother had made it clear, though, that there’d be no presents until Christmas, half a year away, without exception. After pleading to no avail, Mom thought hard and made a plan. Gathering tracing paper, tiny small household items for the pieces, construction paper for the Chance and Community Chest cards, colored paper for the money, and cardboard for the property deeds, she constructed her own version by hand, an exact replica. For a model she used the real version at a friend’s house.
She’d kept it all those years. The handmade game lay right in our closet inside the new family room. As Mom pulled it out to show us, Sally and I couldn’t believe how real it looked. But I was also ashamed. Compared to the kind of patience Mom had displayed, I had to be the most indulged kid imaginable. How could I ever complain? I was forgetting, though—if I even knew it then—that pain is hard to compare. What I needed back then was even the slightest dose of reality. Instead, I lived in a make-believe world where, if a family simply closed its eyes hard enough, everything would be all right. We lived in the shadow world of stigma.
In the dismal cold of February, Mom and Grandmother planned to take Sally and me to a children’s concert of the Columbus Symphony on a Saturday morning. Excited for once, I fell asleep earlier than usual the night before. When I awakened, pale light glowed behind my curtain, a deep snowfall covering the driveway and yard. The sky was a soft gray above the snow cover. Everything outside had a primordial look. After a quick breakfast, I put on my boots, gloves, and coat and raced to the garage to get a snow shovel. I could clear the way for Grandmother’s car!
The snow was powdery and easy to lift off the driveway, the white landscape majestic all around. I made up the game on the spot, running in my boots and pushing the shovel in front of my face like a racing plow, as the snow mounted in front and splayed off to either side. With one row done, I pivoted back to start another. Bitterly cold at first, I soon warmed up, my legs churning. Like boats gliding in turgid water, a few cars floated by on our street, their tires humming over the hardened snow cover.
I turned and started a new row, regaining speed. But an instant later I heard a cracking sound as something smacked me in the mouth. With my lips stinging, I stopped short and the shovel flew out of my hands to make a muted clang on the half-cleared driveway. Stunned, I realized that the blade must have hit a patch of ice beneath the snow, flinging the metal handle back into my face. Using my tongue, I felt something funny in my mouth.
Mom and Sally heard the commotion as I rushed inside to the bathroom, my lip bleeding. Maybe, I prayed silently, it was just a cut. “Oh, no, Steve,” Mom cried, gasping while she looked inside my mouth. “Your front tooth—it’s chipped!” I looked in the mirror and couldn’t believe it: A corner of my front tooth was missing.
“It’s not that big a deal!” I pleaded, trying to stop the panic. But Mom was frantic. “Your beautiful permanent tooth—it’s ruined forever!” she half-sobbed. How had things changed so quickly from that glowing feeling outside to the scene in here?
Grandmother arrived a moment later. Once she heard the story and studied my tooth, she shook her head in a kind of horror. While changing clothes inside my bedroom, I heard Grandmother’s voice across the hall. “Well, Alene, the dentist can fix this. But this is a man’s job, to shovel the snow! If Virgil were here, this would never have happened.” She continued. “Where is he, anyway? Why isn’t he at home?”
I felt hot all over. I wanted to charge out of my room and tell them to stop worrying about the tooth. And no more arguing about Dad: He’s just resting in California! But I didn’t move.
How could I have known at the time that Mom was constantly covering for Dad’s disappearances into mental hospitals? What was true? What was a half-truth? Everyone felt the strain of the shame and cover-up.
Finally calmer, they called me in for one more look, deciding that the dentist could polish off the tooth’s corner. “Let’s hurry and get on our warm coats and head out,” Grandmother said.
After the drive downtown, we walked through the slushy parking lot and joined excited families crowding the hallway of the huge auditorium. But I was overheated and utterly deflated. Slumping in the cushioned chair, I couldn’t wait for school on Monday. It was now certain that if I got too excited, disaster loomed. Life went far better if I tried not to feel at all.
By early spring, I had made a new friend, Brian, who always had something kind to say. His back yard bordered a corn field, part of the university’s agricultural school, with greenhouses off to the side. Baseball season was approaching, so we pitched to each other. Each of us half-worried that if we hit a long one, it might break the glass of those low-slung greenhouses just beyond his family’s yard.
On a warm morning in April, I watched the ball all the way in from his hand. Taking a big swing, remembering how Dad had taught me to wait and then extend my arms, I made solid contact. A moment later we heard the crash.
“It’s OK,” his mom said after we rushed in to tell her, “things like this happen.” There was no way to get the ball back but there was a spare. I sighed in relief.
Whenever I was at his house, only his mom and sister were present. After more baseball a week later, Brian and I sat in the shade drinking lemonade. He looked toward the horizon and said that his dad had died two years ago. “My daddy is in heaven,” he said. “My mom says that we’ll all join him one day.” His face tilted upward as he spoke, as though gazing where his dad now resided.
I swallowed hard. Although terribly sad for him, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I still had a dad, didn’t I? Yet what could I say about him? That he was resting out in California? I had no words to console Brian, or myself.
Brian had been orphaned by his father, but had I? As far as I knew, Dad was neither alive nor dead. At least Brian understood where his dad was.
After that spring, he and I found other friends. Once again, I was frozen in silence.
* * *
All the boys were joining Cub Scout baseball, so I begged Mom to sign me up. I’m sure she felt that doing so would help me endure Dad’s long absence. All the teams were named for Indian tribes. We were the Osage, with bright-yellow T-shirts sporting dark-blue numbers. The other boys always seemed to have their fathers with them at practices and games but I rode my bike to and from the fields alone.
The league was for third, fourth, and fifth graders, so third-grade boys like me were usually the smallest kids and worst players. With my December birthday, I was the youngest third grader of all. But the rules said that everyone had to play at least two innings. The coaches hoped that no balls would come to us during our limited time in the field, and prayed that we didn’t head up to bat with anyone on base.
On a warm, hazy-orange May evening, it was the fourth inning and we were ahead by a run. Peering down the bench, our coach spotted me and, with a sigh, put me into the lineup in right field, where almost no balls were hit. I trotted out, noting the smudged sun low in the sky and the red-brown bricks of our school looming in the background. I smelled the newly cut grass, white clovers mixed in with the green blades. I heard the chant of our infielders, “Hey, batter; hey, batter, batter—swing!” Maybe the inning would pass quickly.
A couple of their players got hits or walks. There was one out, two runners on base. Please, I begged the ball, don’t come my way. But a left-handed batter came to the plate. I cringed, knowing that lefties are likely to pull the ball to right field. Looking strong, he took a couple of hard practice swings. As our pitcher threw the ball in, I saw it first: a flash of white coming off the bat. An instant later the sound arrived, CRRRACK, the ball streaking over the second baseman’s head, bouncing in front of me. Their crowd began to cheer.
I ran to my right to retrieve the ball. Running was no problem, as I was even sort of fast. But when I reached the ball and plucked it out of my glove, a strange thing happened: I froze. My right arm was cocked above my head but the ball stayed glued to my fingers.
I saw the pale sky above me as their runners circled the bases, legs churning. The opposing fans were now screaming: The Hopi were about to take the lead!
“Throw it in,” my coaches yelled from a distant corner of the universe. The infielders waved at me frantically to do something, anything. But I just stood there, the ball flash-frozen in my hand above my head. By now, both the baserunners had scored. The batter rounded third base and crossed home plate with his arms upraised. Their fans erupted.
As though waking from a trance, I brought my arm down and jogged in, tossing the ball underhand to an infielder, who snatched it with a disgusted flick of his wrist. Our shortstop threw his glove into the infield dirt. Numb with shame, I trotted back out to right field. Maybe I’d just melt into the grass out there. Somehow, the next couple of batters popped up or struck out and the inning was over. Shielding my face, I jogged back to our dugout, took off my glove, and stared straight ahead. No one looked at me; no one said a word.
During the next inning one of the assistant coaches came over to me on the bench and said, with kindness: “Well, you didn’t really know what to do out there, did you?” But all I’d needed to do was throw the ball in. I knew that. Most of all I remember that frozen feeling, watching the runners circle the bases as I stood there with the ball planted in my hand. I thought the humiliation would never leave.
After we lost, our team went out on the diamond to face our competitors: “Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Hopi! Hopi! Hopi!” They did the same for us, but their smiles were those of victors. I hopped on my red bike and headed back home. A few minutes later I placed it down quietly in the mud hall and walked upstairs.
“How was the game, Steve?” Mom asked, in the kitchen.
“We lost,” I replied softly. If I’d told her or Sally what just happened, they’d have felt awful and tried to cheer me up, which would have made me feel even worse.
Before drifting off to sleep, I wondered what Dad might say about my spiritual and physical failure, if only he were back. The darkness surrounding me seemed eternal.
* * *
On a bright morning in June, I went downstairs for breakfast. After sitting at my spot at the table, I noticed Dad not far behind me, cooking at the stove. As usual, he was busy and slightly rushed, reaching with a slight grunt to dish out scrambled eggs onto my plate and Sally’s, then hurrying to get bread out of the toaster. It was warm and close in the kitchen. He was wearing his ribbed undershirt, already perspiring. He always sweated when he exerted himself, a robust intensity lurking underneath the quiet philosopher.
But what was he doing there? I couldn’t remember any kind of hello or even what day he’d arrived. There must have been a celebration, even a small one, right? He’d been gone the whole school year. I’d pretty much given up hope.
“Is the food all right?” he called out, looking over the counter at Sally and me as he juggled the pans and utensils. “Yes, it is,” we said, as yellow sunlight suffused the kitchen.
Compared to Mom’s more deliberate style, Dad’s hurried gestures were jarring but their familiarity was reassuring all the same. I wanted to ask him if he got enough rest out in California, but he didn’t bring it up and neither did I. If we went off script, what might happen? Instead, I asked whether he’d be going to campus and he said that he would. We’d meet up in the afternoon back at home, just like before.
If I had any plan, it was to keep trying as hard as I could with my schoolwork and in sports, despite my huge failings in the latter. Trying as hard as I could might prevent Dad from leaving again and hold off the eternal punishment awaiting me. My staying busy might also allow him to get some more rest. The burden of effort sometimes seemed enormous, like standing at the bottom of a towering mountain with no trail in sight. All I could do was trudge forward blindly.
* * *
Even today I sometimes plunge. Each time the feeling is the same. Rejection of some sort is usually the trigger—a missed connection with someone close; the first sign of failure at one of my ventures. Before I know it, I make the leap that everything I’ve attempted is futile. Back in the familiar, breathless terrain of my childhood, I’m desperate for answers that will never come.
The poison, a toxic dose of frustration and despair, spreads to each cell in my body. It feels as though the chunk of rock under my feet has severed from the mainland. Rushing out to sea in a cold, swift current, I can see everyone I know as they recede before my eyes, but I’m powerless to stop their retreat.
Too thin, my arms can’t hold up the world any longer. I’m as paralyzed as I was back in right field.
For a few hours—sometimes as long as a day or two—my expression is frozen. Anyone I encounter wonders what’s wrong, my usual energy having totally evaporated. I’m embroiled in a torrent of nothingness, lacking the power to get back in contact with myself or anyone else. It’s like those “gestalt” figures, such as the black vase against the white background that suddenly turns into two white faces staring at each other. One moment I perceive my world as full of life and spirit, but when the bottom drops out, all hope vanishes. I’ve entered my personal circle of hell.
It’s as close as I come to madness. I may have dodged the bullet of developing a psychotic-level mood disorder but there’s no stopping my fall.
I now understand that the abyss has always been right there next to me, created by the early silence and the role-playing, never quite vanquished by my desperate efforts to shut it out.
What brings me back? A fragment of music, a warm memory, or perhaps a signal from my wife, Kelly, that we’re still connected, that things will be OK. Oxygen fills my mask and the venom gradually flushes from my system. But the next descent lurks.
You’d think I’d have figured it out by now. Still, I’m overpowered each time, sliding headlong into a place of no return, finally certain that all motion will stop. Somewhere deep inside me, fundamental pieces are still missing.
Maybe, I sometimes think, all this should have changed once Dad and I started our regular conversations about his life, following our initial talk during my first spring break. Yet our pact—our unspoken contract—was that he spoke about his episodes, diagnoses, and hospitalizations while I sat there listening, making an occasional comment. It was far from a two-way street.
Even so, I’ve come to think of that initial talk as my second birth: my psychological birth, as my therapist once put it. That 30-minute session in his study, and those that followed for the next quarter century, propelled my life mission to study psychology, understand mental illness, and reduce the huge burden of stigma blanketing the entire enterprise.
Even so, I carried the solo burden of figuring out the way forward. Dad’s seismic upheavals had dominated our family while I worked to stay in control, trying to place my own nagging fears under wraps. I couldn’t quite admit how affected I was, a common theme for kids in families overshadowed by a parent’s mental disorder. Without a true back-and-forth experience, I held my breath each time, wondering what else I might learn about my tortured family.
Breaking through to a more open way of living would take decades. It was the hardest project of my life: to overcome my own personal shame and stigma.
I’m still in the middle of the process.