PART ONE

Before

Introduction

When does it start? Life, that is. Existence, being-ness, whatever I call me — when does it start? Where do I start? They tell us at birth, that Hallmark moment, which is carefully penned next to those tiny, inky-black foot prints on one's birth certificate, a moment so hallowed that it is judiciously tallied and memorialized once per annum by each of us, whether publicly or secretively. But no, they've got it all wrong. I'm certain — because I can remember.

When I was three, my family lived on a military installation situated at the mouth of the Panama Canal in the Pacific Ocean. Each afternoon, eager for respite from the tropical sweat and swelter, my young mother put her three little girls down for naps. Not tired, I lay on my bed with Peter Rabbit tucked safely under my chin. As I lay there stroking my friend's ratty and torn ears, it was as though a portal opened and some part of me slipped through to another world. This is where I would commune with before.

Poor Peter — the safety he offered paled in comparison to the presence I found enveloping me. This presence was not populated with things or persons but rather feelings — feelings of safety and contentment. Friendly feelings. There was no stuff to all this. Just feelings and light. Bright light. Sparkly and cool. There were no questions disturbing the stillness, just knowingness. I remember exploring the bounds of this presence and how it felt endless. I remember delighting in the certainty of its endless, joyous nature, which was somehow not separate from me. Somehow, I was this expansion.

Gradually over time, this portal to before sealed itself and became a dull memory as those I trusted as older and wiser began to graft branches of ignorance onto the pure rootstock of my being. Each of them carefully stuck sticky notes all over me, as if I needed reminders of who I was:

Spittin' image of your Aunt Francis.

You're good. You're bad.

You're right. You're wrong.

You're thin. You're fat.

You should be a doctor when you grow up.

You're this. You're that.

You. You. You.

Are. Are. Are.

From that Hallmark moment, called birth, parents, teachers, priests, and nuns, took turns molding me. Like some bonsai project, they tweaked my uniqueness, this boundless, endless, being-ness into sameness so that today I stand here looking at my hybrid self, imploring the heavens for the wisdom to cleave these grafts and strip me to my original source, leaving me with the resounding question: who am I?

The nuns and priests in their long, black, foreboding habits worked hard at molding me. Saturday nights I can remember whispering with my two older sisters, bedded down in the same attic room with me, about the dread of confession the next morning. "Come on, guys! Get serious! We gotta go in that box again tomorrow! We gotta come up with something!" We searched hard among our innocent beings to come up with new and noteworthy sins to report, as "arguing with my sisters and brothers" and "disobeying my parents" occurred so frequently that most certainly we were damned for failure to repent. Desperate to keep the box experience to a minimum, I whispered, "Well, guys, I'm going with number seven," as "adultery" was one of the big ten I hadn't yet presented, to which my older sister, Linda, suggested, "Nope, nope, nope! Best to stick with the usuals."

So, sin in hand, I knelt, trembling, in the cold, sterile confessional and waited my sentence from the priest's disembodied voice. "Bless me Father for I have sinned. I did not go to church last Sunday." "This is a grave sin, my child," rumbled the Voice. "You must pray ten Hail Marys, ten Our Fathers and fifteen Acts of Contrition!'

Now, that just wasn't fair! I mean really! God went with me everywhere, and we struck up conversations whenever and wherever — bathroom, bedroom, playground. Besides, I thought, it was just too far to walk to church, and Dad was often gone soldiering and not around to take me. As I knelt there reciting my penance, I offered prayers from the heart — confused prayers.

Things didn't improve when the nuns told me that babies, who weren't baptized, went to limbo, a place where they could never know God. This heartless deity didn't sound like the friend I conversed with. No friend of mine would ever condemn these souls to eternal separation or deny them entry into purgatory, should there even be a need for atonement.

I pretty much unsubscribed my membership after a particularly unnerving sermon one Sunday, which further mapped out the rules of admission into heaven, barring all non-Catholics from entry. No way! Good-bye! Sayonara! If my best friend, Mickey, who was Jewish, whatever that was, wasn't allowed in, then I didn't want any part of this group. The veils continued to drop, with me too young to articulate my confusion and to question these edicts set forth by trusted, greater authorities.

Home was a most unsteady foundation. Being a military family, we moved frequently, and by the time I was six, we had relocated six times, eventually settling in a two-bedroom beach cottage, situated steps from the Atlantic in the then-sandy, undeveloped dunes at the north end of Virginia Beach. My naval officer father spent long periods overseas, leaving my highly educated and intellectual lawyer-mom with five small children to raise quite literally by herself, a situation for which all her brilliant book knowledge had not prepared her.

Everyday life at home was most confusing. Some days were spectacular, like being wakened at two in the morning to experience the eye of a hurricane. "Come children, quickly," Mom whispered. "You don't have to get dressed. But hurry or we'll miss our chance." Yawning, hand in hand, we'd stumble after Mom down to the beach, the sand cold and damp between our toes. We'd sit there, jumbled together in our jammies in the sand dunes in the eerie calm and half-light of the storm, and just observe.

I remember the ocean — flat and glassy, with only an occasional, slow ripple. The air was so still it was as though the earth had stopped breathing. But the birds, vast numbers of tiny birds, were everywhere, clinging to the sea oats. Where had they all come from? They clung to their vegetative anchors, without so much as a chirp or a twitter, in contrast to our border collie, Robo, our canine climatologist, who trembled and whimpered at our feet, instinctively aware of the sinking millibars.

Satisfied that we had absorbed the experience, Mom marched us back to our beds and tucked us in, reading to us from Edward Lear's The Quangle Wangle's Hat, complete with the voices of the Fimble Fowl and the Quangle Wangle himself.

Other days were like living on top of a highly combustible, well-laid fire, just waiting to be sparked into conflagration, compounded by the drunken screaming matches that ensued every time my father's ship sailed in. At night, my sisters and I would sneak down from our beds. Huddled at the bottom of the steps outside their bedroom door, we'd listen to their frightful rages, feeling somehow culpable for their disharmony, certain that he would leave yet again. He's gonna leave again, I fretted. And it's all my fault. I shouldn't have pulled Karen's hair when she called me a sissy.

I lived very little of my childhood as a child. "Daaaanaaaaa! Set the...