Memories Unearthed
Visionary Art Museum - Baltimore MD
A favorite museum of mine is a place on the south side of Baltimore's Inner Harbor, the Visionary Art Museum, home to outsider art, art created by non-professionally trained men and women who, most often, were inspired to create after a traumatic life event or driven by obsession or fantastic thoughts. The current special exhibit, Parenting: An Art without a Manual, is an excellent example full of paintings, drawings, and objects made from a plethora of materials. On December 30th, our friend and museum docent, Ivia, graciously led me and my grammar school girl friends, all of us now in our 70's, on a guided tour of the exhibit. We soaked up the artists' stories about the struggles that gave birth their creations.
As always, I was enjoying the art, its quirky pieces, the stories and outsiders' perspectives. That is, until I stood before a sculpture, actually more of a life-size diorama of a family scene. A father stood with a leather strap in his hand looming over his young son ready to give him a whipping while the mother, sitting on a sofa, read to another child, ignoring the father's action.
Suddenly, I was a small child again, standing in front of my father, crying as he did the same to me. The trauma came rushing back, silencing me as I withdrew from my friends who never, in all these years knew of my father's occasional violence. As I bent over his knees with my naked bottom exposed, he took to me with a belt from around his waist or sometimes a brush from his dresser because, apparently, I had been very disobedient. Did it happen often? Not really, but often enough that my humiliation became my secret. No one knew what was happening outside of the family.
As long as I was small enough to fit across his knees, I lived in fear of doing something wrong that would he would deem belt or brush punishment worthy. What did my mother do? Like the mother in the sculpture, she abandoned me. And, like many who experience such trauma, I took my frustrations out on my mother rather than my dad, not understanding that she was his victim as well. Did he love us? Of course he did, in fact, he alone encouraged me to pursue a career. However, like many men who survived WWII, he found it difficult to be gentle or kind in the face of disobedience. Verbal and physical abuse were embedded in his psyche.
Time with therapists in my 20's and 30's helped me connect my dad's behavior to my fear and loathing of authority figures. That is why, after he died, I finally felt free to leave my corporate career. I was no longer afraid of him. After some costly mental angst and struggle, I reinvented myself as an independent consultant at age 33 and later went on to own two consulting businesses with women partners. Men were never again successful in dominating me.
Why am I telling you all this? What purpose does it serve? I certainly don't want people to "feel sorry" for me because I don't feel sorry for myself. Many children have suffered much worse at the hands of their fathers or other adults. Like so many women, I tell my story because despite all the good that may come into one's life, unspoken memories affected us in ways we never expect. My work now is to give voice to these memories so I can move beyond them, not push them back deep into my unconscious. By acknowledging what happened, I am stronger, more alive, more clear thinking and more complete as a human being. To my friends with me at the museum that day, thanks for your understanding. I'm back on track with a few less missing puzzle pieces in my head. What a great way to start the new year.