For the rest of October, I will donate $2.00 of every book sale to a local shelter that provides for women and children. This is a cause for which I am deeply passionate. Let’s keep the world safe for our kids and their caregivers. Suede: A Collection of Poetry is available through Friesen Press, at amazon.com or you can email me for a signed copy at Cindy Hollenbeck.
Eight years ago, my husband Eric and I bought a house. He wanted the perfect place in the package, already put together. I wanted the old place with potential that we could create. Because he was too busy finishing college, I looked at homes with the Realtor. When I walked into the harvest gold living room with hard wood floors on 870 Orchard Ave, I attempted my best poker face. This would be our house. There was no garage, and it had an itty, bitty tiny kitchen, but we had off-street parking and a pantry in a great neighborhood.
Our son turned one in this house, and we had a huge party with family and friends. Eric and I painted the rooms the way we wanted, fixed up the basement room, put a compost barrel in the backyard, and even got TP’d one year. We took gorgeous photos of our three kids backdropped by trees, held Easter egg hunts and trick-or-treated in our neighborhood. I found a great job, and Eric started graduate school. We were well on our way to living what many call the American Dream.
Eric and I had been together nine years, and he had seen me through my bouts of depression stemming from childhood abuse: emotional, physical and sexual. Talk therapy was a huge part of my life. I believe Eric didn’t understand what I went through daily, but he listened and hugged me. After I had our son, my postpartum depression lasted more than a year, and I went on antidepressants, which helped enormously. A few years later, when I turned the big 4-0, I thought, I had never felt happier. But danger loomed on the horizon.
By our son’s fifth birthday, I confessed to Eric that I’d had a three-week affair with a coworker months earlier. It took me five months to confess. Some friends say it was a selfish choice to tell him, but I assure you, no marriage counselor would see me unless I did. I wanted to work things out, not split up. And I guessed the affair was a symptom of my past abuse rearing its ugliness into my wonderful present as it had done before. Never with Eric, but in other healthy relationships. Eric saw my explanation as an excuse for me to “have fun” with my coworker “Leif.”
Eric called Leif’s wife and told her about the affair. Then in a drunken rant, he told our daughters. And the next thing I knew, my life spiraled into complete pandemonium. A state of disarray that my therapists warned I was a master at creating. People who grow up in chaotic environments need to learn to like the quiet.
Within six months, I asked Eric to leave our house because he was drinking and being abusive. He filed for divorce on the grounds of infidelity. He destroyed me financially. I quit my job. I tried to seek comfort from Leif, but realized he was only interested in the forbidden wife. My elder daughter lost respect for me. My middle daughter, who was going through puberty, started cutting. And my son said he wished Mommy and Daddy would stop fighting.
My daughters are grown. I am living alone in this huge house, my son coming half time. Leif is a dirty word. I am so guilt ridden about the affair that I cannot have a normal conversation with Eric. He is still angry, and it’s been five years. Our divorce has been final for two and neither one of us can move on. Me, because no one holds a candle to my ex-husband, whom I am still in love with. And him, because he’s bitter. He has a new home, a job he likes. We live blocks from each other. Our son is nine and is well adjusted and tender-hearted.
Tonight, I am signing papers to put our house on the market. I cried for the first two weeks after I realized I had to sell it. I can’t look anywhere without seeing Eric and the kids. Eric playing X-box in the living room. The girls playing Rock Band. All of us having dinner in the sun room. Drinking coffee in the itty, bitty tiny little kitchen. Raking leaves in the back yard. Tearing down the toilet paper in the front yard.
Many of my friends ask, Why are you and Eric not back together? It all depends on how you look at it.
From ages four to nine I was sexually abused by my step-uncle “Reggie” who was seven years older. He paid me in quarters and record albums, including Cheech and Chong’s Big Bambu and Toys in the Attic by Aerosmith. I had no idea that the abuse was wrong and blocked the memory until I turned 18.
When I told my father and stepmother about the abuse, they said, “Why didn’t you tell us then?” I was four. And of course, my stepmother accused me of trying to get her brother Reggie in trouble and cause problems between her and my father.
(as if they didn’t have enough on their own) Now I know this response is typical of a family in denial.
I’ve spent decades in therapy working through the after effects of the abuse, which includes mistrust of men and authority figures, fear of commitment, control issues, and a penchant for the melodramatic. I have left good relationships for terrible ones, including my last marriage. I don’t want to be alone but keep making that happen. The truth is, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
In a poetry class years ago, I had a teacher who was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and not afraid to talk about it. He really understood the damage it causes to the human psyche. Through discussion, he helped me get my writing to a place where I could articulate what I wanted with the following poem. He read The Coin Collector and said, “You killed ‘im off, eh?” I didn’t mean to, but the poem took me there. And so be it.
The Coin Collector
You look tranquil in nickel-plate, uncle,
shark skin suit, black tie, eyeglasses.
They’ve done great work with your makeup,
brushed your hair back as you would
have worn for a wedding or wake. Your mother
offers kind words, says that as a child
you saved every penny you found. Your sister
talks about your thumbs, how they bent nearly
flat from the indent of so many coins.
I remember the Lincoln Cent collection book
you gave me, your taking me to antique shops
when I was thirteen, our private talks
of my high school lovers, all of which
you were dying to hear. These days, I carry
grief in my pockets like the coins you collected,
handled so often they’ve lost their brilliance.
I think of the young girl from a family
where no hands reached, how she welcomed
your affection year after year, afternoons
in your bedroom, a quarter a trip, your arms
linked through her legs, her fingers
tugging your blond hair, the pleasant ache
she felt between her legs then—and now—
when she hears them say your name, runs
her finger along the ribbed edge of a quarter,
sees the coffin close over your face.
The Week My Father Was Dying
The week my father was dying, I fell in love with him—
again. When I was six, I’d proposed, scrawled
I love Daddy over the wood benches in the back
of his shoe repair shop, carved hearts into the
hard plastic of the sewing machine table.
But the week my father was dying, shrunken frame
slouched in the fort of pillows and sheets on the giant
hospital bed in his living room, oxygen tank in the corner,
his black hair was combed straight, almond-shaped
eyes wide as a child’s, toothy smile yellow and straight.
I stood in the kitchen scooping chocolate ice cream
into a bowl, covered the mound in crushed pineapple.
I felt him staring, so looked over and waved. Up
to his neck in blankets, it took him forever to lift
his big old hand from beneath the fort to wave back.
I have his hands, and feet. It’s enough to have his wiry
hair, scratchy voice, flat Italian nose, and stubborn streak—
but why the chimp-like hands and feet with every
toe the same size? I want to pluck them off with
the pincer pliers he used to rip the soles off shoes.
He once told me, “You couldn’t be more like me if you tried.”
I drink to excess, choose damaged lovers, live 3000 miles
away from family. But the week my father was dying, I sat
with him, said, Everything good about me came from you.
You’re my best friend, I said, and I love you.
Thank you, he said. Some kids don’t feel that way about their dads.
I laughed out loud, rested my arms around the declining
slopes of his shoulders. He felt so small.
When you’ve had experiences such as mine–emotional, physical, and sexual abuse during childhood–you can choose to ignore the pain or zap its power through the written word. Yes, it’s scary.
I write to share my experiences with others to create a sense of community. Because when I read the work of others who have had experiences similar to mine, I feel less alienated and less “freakish.” In the words of John Lennon: “It’s not just me.”
Today I learned that my best friend, a therapist, lent my poetry book Suede to a client, who was able to use my poetry as inspiration to write her own healing poems. That, my friends is what it’s all about. Let’s continue to form a community of writers, readers and healers. Let’s make each other feel more connected.
The Cobbler's Daughter 