Song of Myself (1892 version)
BY WALT WHITMAN
1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
The Improbably Blessed Life of Larry
An odds-maker might say that he had no business succeeding at anything. From the age of four to seventeen, Larry was the target of a sociopath’s rage. He and his brother, along with two stepbrothers, and mom, lived under an almost constant threat of violence. In Larry’s words, “there was always a sense of impending doom.” River town to river town, ramshackle house to ramshackle house, unpaid bills kept the family on the move. Larry couldn’t “even count the number of elementary and junior high schools: ten to thirteen would be a rough guess.” Against all odds, Larry graduated high school, but he “never did complete a grade in the same [high school].” This nomadic life kept Larry and his brothers invisible to the prying eyes of teachers and staff, who might have asked a question about a suspicious bruise, an improbable cut, or vacant stare. Even a little stability may have allowed the compassionate eyes of a teacher or coach to notice Larry’s older brother’s athletic talent, and provide him better opportunities than the drug dealers who took his money, and eventually his life.
So how is it that this boy, with so few investments in his psycho-social-spiritual bank account, could appreciate into a man who would successfully raise two boys, and two stepchildren with affection and fidelity? How does a man from such a hard scrabble background put together an exceptional marriage and thirty-five year career as an electrician that gave way to a secure retirement complete with ten loving grandchildren, and winters in Florida?
Last week’s article introduced us to a band of brothers who were able to salvage toys out of junk yards, and wrecked Christmases. It highlighted the power of childhood imagination and play to transcend cruelty and injustice. It also placed into focus the power of sharing a burden to lighten its load. Once again, Sunday Morning Café returns to the theme of psychological and spiritual resilience as exemplified in this week’s subject, Larry. We return to the question: “How did Larry remain unbroken?”
How to Read This Article
There was a quality to Renaissance art that celebrated the natural grandeur of the human being. Renaissance artists had the audacity to celebrate divinity contained within the human condition. Though not a poet from that era, Walt Whitman’s, Song of Myself, nicely captures that perspective as contained in the quote at the top of the article.
As I sifted through hours of interviews, what came into focus relative to Larry’s resilience, had less to do with skills and practices, and more to do with something profound that is part and parcel of the human condition. To appreciate this part of his story, I invite you to take up the lens through which Walt Whitman looked out the world, and into himself. For as long as it takes to enjoy a cup of coffee, I invite you to not only “celebrate” what’s in Larry, but to notice the common humanity that you share with him, and celebrate what’s in you as well. See if you can’t recognize in Larry, and yourself a kind of flesh and blood nobility that artists like Michelangelo tried to capture in stone and paint.
Overcoming a Cruel Past: “Aunt Rebecca Loved Me to Death”
Larry and his older brother would sit anxiously on their front steps waiting for their dad to pick them up for their once-a-month prison furlough that would last from 10:00am on Saturday, to 5:00pm on Sunday. If he happened to be late, Dick,the stepfather, would cancel that month’s visit. After a successful visit, when they returned on Sunday evening, the interrogation would begin. “What did you tell him?” “Where did you go?” “What did you do?” A wrong answer resulted in a beating, or worse—potential cancellation of future visits to dad’s house. Larry and Greg knew all too well that Dick was mean enough to follow through on such threats.
In between those somber bookends, once-a-month, Greg and Larry experienced a real home where belts, class rings, and extension cords served single purposes that had nothing to do with bruises, cuts and humiliation. In his 2018 song by the same name, John Prine sang, “When I Get To Heaven,” [he was]“going to look up his aunts,” “because that’s where all the love started.” For Larry, that would be his Aunt Rebecca. He certainly felt loved by his dad, and Grandma, but it was Aunt Rebecca that gave him the psychological ground to stand on, and a horizon to steer toward. From her love, his little psyche constructed an inner-home base.
Our interview took place over the phone, but you could hear the smile and feel the warmth in Larry’s voice when he said, “Aunt Rebecca loved me to death! She loved me no matter what!” He continued, “She was always a calming presence.” He credits Aunt Rebecca for his not becoming a drug addict like his older brother, Greg. “Anytime I’d think of her, I didn’t want to be a disappointment to her.” Despite blowing through schools like a piece of tumbleweed, he always managed to complete homework, take tests, and complete each grade. The secure base within him, crafted by her unconditional love allowed Larry to disprove Dick’s premonition, “You’ll never graduate high school!” “The hell I won’t!” Larry whispered to himself on the day he took his last beating and ran away from home to finish his senior year, and meet his destiny.
Larry’s story tracks precisely with the findings of resilience research like that of Gina O’Connell Higgins (Resilient Adults: Overcoming A Cruel Past, 1994). She interviewed perhaps a hundred adult subjects whose childhoods were shot through withsevere abuse. Like Larry, these adults had achieved success in their careers and personal lives. What was the thing they had in common? In each of their stories, there was someone who showed them a “no matter what” kind of love—someone like Aunt Rebecca. Again, like Larry, it was often love that was experienced once-a-month, or far less. Sometimes it was experienced as an observation of a neighbor’s family, providing an aspirational goal for the future they would one day create. O’Connell-Higgins’s case studies read like Larry’s story. You get a sense that children in these settings possess the ability to multiply loaves and fishes. It is as if the human soul has a CRISPR function built into it that can take a sample of an Aunt’s unconditional love, and replicate its RNA until there is enough love to construct a scaffold that can hold a life.
A Takeaway from Larry’s Story
We live in an age of dawning psychological insight. There is a growing awareness of the ubiquity of trauma in our lives, and the heretofore unacknowledged impact of that trauma. Perhaps you have had to recognize and heal from something as dramatic as Larry’s challenges? Or maybe your disruptive event was more subtle, but nonetheless real? I listened in disbelief as a ninety something year-old farmer told me that, in his estimation,the Pandemic of 2020 was harder on people than the Great Depression or World War II. Unlike those epic events that exercised a uniting centripetal force on communities, COVID, with its centrifugal forces, both caused, and demanded isolation.
If we are to acknowledge our own psychological wounds, it seems to me that it is essential to equally acknowledge, that what was true of Larry and the children in O’Connell-Higgin’s study, is true of you and me as well! Dorothy Day, (not “Doris Day” the singer/actor) the Twentieth Century saint and co-founder of The Catholic Worker movement bristled when she was referred to as a saint, “I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.” She knew the human tendency to construct Mount Olympus’s, where we cordon off those whose lives might challenge us. Safe behind the boundaries of the mentally gated communities in our imagination, we admire them from a distance. All the while, an unrecognized greatness pulses at the core of ourselves that has called us, and will call us to quiet, or not so quiet acts of beauty and bravery.
My profession rightly invites men and women to acknowledge the trauma and suffering in their lives so that they can heal, and better meet their destinies with unfettered energy, creativity and love. I frequently worry that we fail to simultaneously highlight the unbroken part. After all, as Walt Whitman reminds us, what is in Larry is in you and me too. We celebrate Larry’s resilience in the face of impossible odds because his story points beyond himself and to a strength that resides within us, including our children!
Additionally, Larry’s story challenges you and me to look out beyond the boundaries of our fenced in yards. Perhaps you are called to be someone’s Aunt Rebecca to provide a small or large piece of a “no matter what” kind of love that will one day fit together with other pieces to form a secure base for a young man or woman’s life? Do you have a loaf of a “no matter what” kind of love to spare, not only for your own children, but for your nieces, nephews, adopted nieces and nephews, for kids who visit your house, for kids you coach and teach in big and small ways?
Can you spare a little meditation time this week to step back into those moments in your life when an Aunt Rebecca invested a “no matter what” kind of love in you?