Of wooden spoons and olive branches.
Jan. 28th, 2003 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ambitious_wenchNote: The following is a fictionalized account of actual events. The friend I write of will no doubt recognize it, as will our companion. I have been told that my writing is good. Up until now it's been used mostly for entertainment. But sometimes you have to pay the rent for what gifts you've got, and I suppose that writing out this short bit about child abuse is that rent. I hope that it stings, I hope that it hurts to read. I hope that in these words someone else finds the courage to confront. If you recognize your own behavior here, get help. Abused children grow up to be abusers. Not all, but a disproportionate number of abusive adults were abused themselves as children. Child abuse is generational. Make it stop!
My friend told me of having to report a case of child abuse last night. He had seen it with his own eyes, strap and hand marks on the little girl's body. The pictures were right there in his hands. He said that the mother screamed obscenities at him, and threatened him as she was taken away by the police from the photo lab where he works.
We sat with our snifters of brandy, and almost simultaneously, we both blurted out that we had also been abused as children. He spoke of a wooden spoon being broken over his back during a brutal beating, and how it only got worse from there because "of course it was my fault".
As he spoke, my eyes closed, and I remembered how I had to go outside to the olive tree on our trailer lot as a child, and get an olive switch. Olive trees if untended will develop "suckers", long, straight supple shoots from the base of the tree, sometimes 5' or 6' high. They are thick and tough at the base, often as thick as a man's thumb.
"I used to be beat with an olive switch. How ironic..." In all those years, I cannot ever remember realizing the irony of it before. My friend looked puzzled, and our other companion broke silence to inform "An olive branch is usually a symbol of peace."
We spoke of childhood horrors, the three of us.
"I used to punch myself in the head repeatedly to make her stop."
"And the next door neighbor used to babysit me, and she abused me in other ways."
"I can't remember most of my childhood".
"I remember hearing a child screaming and crying, and it turns out it was me"
"I was raped when I was 6 by a babysitter"
"It would have to be at least as thick as her thumb, or it would be worse"
"I showed the welts on my back to a neighbor, but nothing was ever done."
On Sunday, Techi and I went to the local Agway store to buy rabbit food. With a wind chill in the teens to single digits, there was a bit of irony in the fact that there was an olive sapling on the checkout counter. It was gangly, a straight shoot with alternating leaves. It was on sale because it had broken through the packaging and was growing. I looked at its silvery grey-green leaves, and thought of buying it to grow in my greenhouse. I didn't think of the switches. I honestly didn't. How odd. But I walked out of there without buying it.
I'm going to go back and buy it today, I think. It would be a nice way to affirm my own survival. And I can dedicate it to the little girl in the pictures, and hope that she thrives in spite of the olive switches and wooden spoons in her past. And to the photo lab tech who had the courage to report it to the police.
My friend told me of having to report a case of child abuse last night. He had seen it with his own eyes, strap and hand marks on the little girl's body. The pictures were right there in his hands. He said that the mother screamed obscenities at him, and threatened him as she was taken away by the police from the photo lab where he works.
We sat with our snifters of brandy, and almost simultaneously, we both blurted out that we had also been abused as children. He spoke of a wooden spoon being broken over his back during a brutal beating, and how it only got worse from there because "of course it was my fault".
As he spoke, my eyes closed, and I remembered how I had to go outside to the olive tree on our trailer lot as a child, and get an olive switch. Olive trees if untended will develop "suckers", long, straight supple shoots from the base of the tree, sometimes 5' or 6' high. They are thick and tough at the base, often as thick as a man's thumb.
"I used to be beat with an olive switch. How ironic..." In all those years, I cannot ever remember realizing the irony of it before. My friend looked puzzled, and our other companion broke silence to inform "An olive branch is usually a symbol of peace."
We spoke of childhood horrors, the three of us.
"I used to punch myself in the head repeatedly to make her stop."
"And the next door neighbor used to babysit me, and she abused me in other ways."
"I can't remember most of my childhood".
"I remember hearing a child screaming and crying, and it turns out it was me"
"I was raped when I was 6 by a babysitter"
"It would have to be at least as thick as her thumb, or it would be worse"
"I showed the welts on my back to a neighbor, but nothing was ever done."
On Sunday, Techi and I went to the local Agway store to buy rabbit food. With a wind chill in the teens to single digits, there was a bit of irony in the fact that there was an olive sapling on the checkout counter. It was gangly, a straight shoot with alternating leaves. It was on sale because it had broken through the packaging and was growing. I looked at its silvery grey-green leaves, and thought of buying it to grow in my greenhouse. I didn't think of the switches. I honestly didn't. How odd. But I walked out of there without buying it.
I'm going to go back and buy it today, I think. It would be a nice way to affirm my own survival. And I can dedicate it to the little girl in the pictures, and hope that she thrives in spite of the olive switches and wooden spoons in her past. And to the photo lab tech who had the courage to report it to the police.
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-29 06:24 am (UTC)Thanks for sharing.
I've been very lucky in many ways; one of the most important is the only way I know about child abuse is from my work, and not from my own personal life. I had good parents --the best any man could hope for.
I remember the lecture series my second year of medical school, trained what to look for, what questions to ask, seen the slides and the color plates in our texts, been taught what laws to use and what procedures to execute, and mercifully, despite all that I've seen on wards, that horror I haven't seen. Yet.
It will come. I hope I can do at least as good a job with it as that photo lab tech did.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 02:41 pm (UTC)