I had hoped that by the 70th anniversary of an event that forever changed my life and affected the lives of many others, I would have written a few pages for a book that I feel is my destiny to write. Here it is, January 27th, 2022, and I have nothing tangible to share. Years and years of thought on what I would say and how I would say it have not produced one single page.
In 2020 I made a stab at writing my memoirs by enrolling in a McMaster University project. I was assigned a volunteer student whose role in the project was to record our conversations, ask questions, and type manuscripts. After a few zoom sessions, it became clear that she was not fully invested in the project, so we parted ways. Something good did come from the experience however. On my own, I managed to write an amusing story from my youth about a beauty pageant that my cousin and I put on in my backyard. I was invited to read “Beauty Pageant Day” in the video finale of the course.
I have given a lot of thought about what I might call my book and I came up with two possible titles: “Daddy’s Girl, but Mommy’s Baby”, which apparently I said to a reporter who came to my aunt’s house to “interview” me--a 3 ½ year old child; and “Where’s My Pal?”, which I paraphrased from a line in another article that was published in a local newspaper about my family’s tragedy. My mom told me years later that she and my dad were not aware that my dad’s sister had allowed reporters to talk to me and take photos. Neither did my parents provide photos of my siblings for the articles. How could they? Everything was lost in the fire.
With years of thought put into what I will write, and two working book titles and a list of titles for chapters, why then have I not been able to put pen to paper? I do not think I am experiencing conventional writer’s block which is described as a condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing. I am never at a loss for writing prompts. If I think it, I can write it. What I think I suffer from is a “mental block” that won’t let me dig deep into my past.
I sought out professionals whom I thought might help me unleash whatever is blocking me from writing about my past. I even went as far as taking the 1952 articles with me in the hopes that they would be useful in helping banish whatever was the root cause of my mental block; but conversations always came back to the here and now. It seems no one was trained to handle someone with a decades old tragedy. Getting proper help was becoming a lost cause, that is, until a young Naturopathic intern made a suggestion. As a follow-up to my appointment, my ND intern sent links to video talks by BC psychiatrist Dr. Gabor Maté on the subject of trauma. Sydney thought I would find the videos informative and helpful. She was correct.
Dr. Gabor Maté has spent years working on the connection between early childhood trauma and its behavioral effects on adults. Early childhood trauma generally refers to ages 0-6, but Dr. Maté theorizes that trauma can begin even before birth or be present in an individual “even if they have no memory of the trauma.” When I heard Dr. Maté make that statement in his talk, it felt as though he was speaking directly to me. For the first time I was discovering how being a ‘victim of trauma’ had affected my life, even if I remember nothing. Dr. Gabor Maté’s words were a revelation.
My mom tried to create memories for me by telling me wonderful stories about my siblings. One of my most cherished memories that she shared happened on the day Mom and Dad brought me home from the maternity ward. All three of my siblings wanted to be the first to hold me, so Mom asked them each to hold out their hands face up and then she gently placed me across all six hands. That way, each one of the three could claim that they held their new baby sister first. Mom knew that such stories would keep Donald, Arlene, and Leonard’s memory alive and provide me with a connection to my past. I could have asked my mom anything during our talks and she would have given me an answer; but I never asked her anything about the night of the fire because I knew it would make her cry.
I have zero recollection about the events of January 27th, 1952. Anything I learned over the years came to me from outside sources—relatives, friends, newspapers. “Little pitchers have big ears”, and I probably heard a lot that I should not have been party to. I often wonder how could I not have heard the sirens, the commotion, and the cries in the night from the safety of neighbour’s house that was the width of a driveway away? I think God or Nature in his/her infinite wisdom protected my 3 ½ year old self from what was unbearable to see and hear. In doing that, the crucial years of my development were erased. My first memory of my own existence started in Grade one just after I had turned six. Caught between my past and my present, I remember sitting at my desk, the kind where the seat is attached, and leaving room for Arlene to sit beside me. My heart aches at the image of that sad little girl waiting for a sister who will never arrive. I was deeply scarred by a trauma I couldn’t even remember. I would like to tell that little six year old girl that there will be happy times in her future; but I know the scars of trauma will be with her all through her life and shadow every thought she has and colour every decision she makes.
It is all very complicated. I need to unbury hidden parts of my life, lay them out for scrutiny, and then, hopefully, put them to rest. Ultimately it will free me by allowing me to better understand the whys of how my life played out; but I have to question if I want to put myself through such a painful process. I may have to satisfy my need to write my memoirs by sticking to the happy tales of my past and skipping the darker, not-so-happy, stories. It will be an incomplete memoir; but maybe that is okay.
A major issue I grapple with is that my story involves people I love dearly, and not just my parents and siblings. Studies have shown that trauma does not stop with an individual; it is generational. What happened to my parents affected me, and consequently my children, and maybe even my grandchildren. Curiously, trauma that causes emotional stress can also manifest in physical ailments, as explained by Dr. Maté in his book, When the Body Says No:
Emotional stress is a major cause of physical illness, from cancer to autoimmune conditions and many other chronic diseases. The brain and body systems that process emotions are intimately connected with the hormonal apparatus, the nervous system, and in particular the immune system.
In video talk on the subject, Dr. Maté demonstrated his theory by sharing a personal story:
As a child of the Holocaust, Dr. Maté was given over to his aunt in order to save his life. Being separated from his mother caused such trauma for him that to this day if his wife is late picking him up at the airport, he gets a pain in his chest--a physical manifestation of his early childhood trauma. He knows as a psychiatrist that his fear of abandonment (separation from his mother) has once again crept back into his life. Not everyone can relate to this seemingly irrational response to waiting for someone who is not on time; but those of us who have suffered early childhood trauma understand all too well.
Until next time, C.M.