Flight
by Hollie Harper
We grow up where we grow up. I grew up in Philadelphia til I was 9, and then the Jersey Shore.
My childhood was a pretty normal 70’s one; Big Wheels, Tang, hip huggers, corduroy everything, cornrows, Love Boat, Soul train, double dutch, going to the store for cigarettes for the adults and plenty of relaxed racism, sexism and homophobia…the good old days
One time when I was young I heard my father and uncle talking about a basketball game where one of the players “Took Flight”. My father’s hand diagonally took flight as he reenacted the mood. His eyes lit up. My uncle laughed “Yeah he just…. left”.
I pictured the player walking to the side, picking up a suit case and curtly saying “That’s It”. And then he’d leave…. Just get out of town.
Sometimes we travel but never leave.
We stay right within our body, but our soul goes to another place. In times of exhilaration, bravery, disbelief, tragedy and savagery. It’s like the brain spares us from the extreme. That bridge between our soul’s limit and our ability to take flight is well traveled whether we acknowledge it or not.
Sometimes I feel terrible because I can’t remember any of my wedding vows that were sooooo important to me then, but I know I was happy. Every picture I’m smiling ear to ear. I was giddy with joy…like I felt that glow young children see on the tree Christmas morning.
But then sometimes I am grateful I don’t remember. When my dad told us he and mom were getting a divorce (we were 2, 7 and 8) he took us to Fairmount park in Philadelphia. He planned to break the news as we walked along the lake.
Divorce is traumatizing to kids, but I have no memory of the heartbreaking moment he told us because right as he said “Your mom and I are splitting up”, I looked to the lake on the left and there was a drowned boy, about 14-years old, in a flannel shirt and blue jeans shorts floating beside us.
But there are times happenstance didn’t save me…. but my soul did. The car accident I was in 2nd year of college was horrible. No one died but I saw the car coming right at us as she blew through the intersection and t-boned us. I remember it happening, but the memory of any fear is gone. I know I was scared. My best friend said I screamed like a horror film. I don’t remember. I don’t remember the firemen removing my best friend, her mother and me from the car except in snippets.
I don’t remember anything until the moment we all cracked jokes in the ER. My soul flew right over the horrible stuff to the comedy of it all.
The 2006 case of Nixzmary Brown is familiar to many New Yorkers.
She was a 7-year-old girl who was murdered her mother’s boyfriend while she stood by. Eventually her mother was sentenced to 36 years in prison while her boyfriend got 29. The details of her case kept me up at night. Nixzmary was being abused for at least a year before she was murdered.
Her mother’s boyfriend made her sleep in a dog crate some nights because he didn’t want her using the bathroom. And the night he killed her, because she took a yogurt that didn’t belong to her, police found a chair she was routinely strapped to. This is the point where most people tune out. It’s where the average soul takes flight.
Before I had kids, I could only imagine how I would love them, but the truth is, as anyone who’s ever raised a child knows, it’s about 1000 times more than you ever could have imagined. You love them so much you live in constant fear of a world without them.Their happiness is everything and when they learn something new, you learn it all over again.
My children’s growing little bodies make me laugh as they jump around like kitty cats and roll around like puppies. Even though they are in school now I spend endless time figuring out their summer camps, girl scouts, African scouts, debate matches, birthday parties, shopping for braces, sleepovers, homework and vaccinations.
Their lives sit in my hands every day.
And I love it. Hell, I cuss and complain cause I’m always tired, I never have any money and I can’t go anywhere but when I see Luna, I see my grandmother in her face. I never thought I would see her again and then Luna came through. And Keith’s father left the world in 2010 and Razi came 2 years later, with distinct mannerisms and full sayings his grandfather he never met used to blurt out. It’s a gift.
I close my eyes at night and map out the safest subway route Luna will take in high school…2 years from now. Mom For Life. I love them down to their stink, the nastiness, the bad tween attitude and the bruiser’s ass that still doesn’t get wiped properly yet (why are boys like this?)….My kids are the gold in my soul.
But what happened to Nixzmary? What could have possibly gone through her mother’s head while she stood and watched her boyfriend strike her daughter’s 40-pound body again, again and again? Watching her gasp for air? Say “Help Mommie please”. I’m not making this up. This is her mother’s testimony.
Years ago as I read the story in The Post and saw Nixzmary’s smile-less 6-year-old face I wondered “Did she know the end was coming?” And knowing the horror she lived through, Did she welcome it?
Did her soul’s limit and her ability to take flight meet halfway across the bridge, assess the damage and say, “Let’s leave…and not come back”?
Did death save her from one more beating? One more night spent like a dog in a crate or strapped to a chair with monsters half-ass running their home like a waiting room to hell.
She got out of town.
And I wonder how many times her soul had to take flight in order to come back.
I wonder where her soul is now, 13 years after it was stomped from existence like didn’t no one love her.
Did it float among the ancestors? Them all reaching out to catch this poor baby in harrowing free fall
To what town did her soul travel? Because she’s not here.
She got out.
#TheSystem
#YesIAmThatMom
