Diana's Blog: Quirky Words and Book Reviews

December 19, 2008
What Richard Paul Evans tells me this morning during our interview, I find chilling. I knew, but I didn't know. He says his new Christmas book GRACE was sparked by a conversation with a social worker during the 1960's.
Richard has been investing heavily in healing abused kids since his first book THE CHRISTMAS BOX became a huge hit. A personal investment, as well, working with abused kids and talking with caseworkers. This particular social worker told him several years ago that there were a lot of good girls on the streets in the early 1960's. Why. Simple. They were abused, and they split. Grace's character was based on them.
GRACE is written through the eyes of a man whose life was changed irrevocably by a teenage girl who turns up, dumpster-diving, at his burger joint job when he was a teenager -- and he takes her home, hiding her in the clubhouse he and his brother share in the backyard. Grace finally reveals her secret -- that her stepfather is sexually abusing her. The book is painful, and Richard says it's hard on some readers, but -- and I'm saying this -- damn it, it's true! These things happen, and to not look, to not pay attention, to not say stop, is to destroy these girls even more. Grace didn't tell -- same reason I didn't tell -- because no one -- back then, especially, would believe that men would rape their stepdaughters. It is beyond evil. The ending of GRACE is not pretty -- no, no spoiler here -- but the chance for redemption is in GRACE.
Notice when a little girl seems precocious, when she flirts and wiggles on men's laps, and if you weren't paying attention, you'd think she was a grown woman. Yeah, there she is. Talk to her. Let her know you will listen with your heart.
I was four-and-a-half when my stepfather started raping me -- the violence forced my internal organs out of place. I remember the night before my first gyn appointment, when I was a teenager, my mother and stepfather spoke directly to me "If your hymen is broken, tell the doctor it's because of all the gymnastics you do."
Who says that to their kid?
I didn't run away like Grace did. Why not. I knew New York -- that's where I would have headed. I saw the whores, and I knew that was my fate if I ran. But my grandmother lived in the city, and it would have been logical to live with her, but how would I explain it. I couldn't put words to any of it -- I'm still like that -- if it's traumatic or deeply emotional, I retain the feeling and the pictures, but I have trouble saying the words. Back then, instead of running away in body -- oh, I tried once, ran off one Sunday with a few books and the fat newspaper, and no extra clothes, and it wasn't worth it -- so instead of running away in body, I would go away in my mind. Or the angels would come take me away. And, now, so many years later, the damage remains, and I heal stitch by stitch, creating new memories, new loves, new neural pathways. And sometimes I fall back into that horrible black hole of terror of my childhood, and it takes magic, someone loving, great strength to pull out and snap back into being me.
And when I read GRACE, my heart rips apart again -- for all those little girls.
Notice.
Read GRACE.

Labels: book review., Christmas, GRACE, rape, Richard Paul Evans, social workers, stepfather, tell the truth, transcending the trauma, whores

December 12, 2008
Richard Paul Evans came into my life with a short stack of skinny, self-published, paperback books. Each was entitled THE CHRISTMAS BOX. He was traveling around the country, radio station to radio station, trying to get news people and air personalities interested in his little heartfelt book. I loved it, and had no idea it would become a huge hit, and that Richard would write more than a dozen more Christmas books. The latest is GRACE.
GRACE is about a fourteen year old boy whose family is down on its luck, and they have to move to Salt Lake City. He's working in a burger joint, when, one night, he meets a girl from school who is dumpster-diving. Her name is Grace, and she's a runaway. He hides her in the clubhouse his brother and he had built in the backyard. When he starts seeing news reports that this girl Madeline -- who looks a lot like Grace -- has run away, Grace fesses up. Madeline is her first name, she tells the kid, Eric, and Grace is her middle name. She tells him she's run away from her sexually-abusive stepfather.
Richard says all his Christmas stories are about redemption, but this one has a sad ending. No spoiler here -- the book is wonderful. Richard says it is based on a true story, and it is designed to raise awareness about child abuse. He has my support.
The story gave me chills of recognition. Abusive stepfather. Raping the girl. This is true. This is my story, too. The thing is -- if you live, you have to tell. That is my journey. If you tell, maybe another girl, maybe one who is in the thick of it and so frightened she can't hear her own soul inside, will hear that she is not alone, and maybe she will find the words, the strength to tell. When I finally told, I was in college, and I was writing about it -- obliquely -- in an English composition. The professor noticed. She asked me about it. I froze up, got frightened again, thought she was making a pass at me. When you grow up with your stepfather raping you and pawing at you and "tickling" you, you see everything through the lens of sexual abuse. I shut down, and essentially ran away from the professor, a woman who could have helped me.
More than a decade went by before my body forced me to tell. My sons were three and five, the age I was when my mother pushed my real dad out of the picture -- for real and literally. I never saw him again, was not allowed to speak of him, his image was cut out of every photograph. My stepfather started in on me, trying to win my loyalty, by teaching me how to be a woman. I was four and a half. My real dad -- a friend of the police chief in town -- attempted every legal manuever he could think of, including contesting the divorce...which led to my mother becoming a bigamist...but the methods didn't work.
And I didn't tell what my stepfather was doing to me. Instead, when my kids were three and five, and I worked an early shift in radio, and my husband worked a late shift in radio, something horrible began to happen. My husband would come home just after midnight, and flip on the hall light -- and I would wake up screaming. I would see a man's form, backlit by the hall light, and I was five again, and six, and seven, and eight, and on... This time, I screamed when the man came into my room. In reality, it was my husband. But, suddenly, my child-mind was in charge again, re-living that terror my body had experienced. Well, that kind of gets your attention.
At some point, the terror returns. When the mind can handle it, it comes up again. It often recurs when your children are the age you were when the sexual abuse began. The walls that held back the dirty, terrifying secrets of your childhood crumble, and this time, with your husband by your side -- hopefully -- you dig through the rubble for your soul, and you re-learn the Truth, re-firing the synapses until good Truths are patterned.
It is a long journey. If you are a child -- or you were a child -- whose innocense was taken, you have an amazing challenge. This is -- oddly enough -- a gift, because only the strongest, the most courageous, the shaman among us, are charged with this journey. When I went to interview Martha Beck for her book STEERING BY STARLIGHT, the anthropologist somehow engaged me to reveal my story. And, then Beck said that I -- among many others like me -- am a shaman. She said I must continue to write and interview and tell stories. It is why I am here. I do live a magical life. I am enormously grateful that I am alive, and most of what happened no longer rules how I live, how I react. So there are my secrets -- I was sexually-abused, and I am a shaman.
I have an open invitation to interview Richard Paul Evans about his book. I now realize that I must accept.

Labels: book review, GRACE, Martha Beck, Richard Paul Evans, secrets, sexual abuse, shaman., STEERING BY STARLIGHT, stepfather, transcending the trauma

December 10, 2008
Right up front we see a full page shot of Al Jolson and the words "You ain't heard nothing yet." This was the start of the Warner Brothers' 85 years. YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS! is a magnificent full-color book celebrating that anniversary. There were four Warner brothers, the eldest born in Poland. By 1907, the quartet had begun its historic collaboration with simply a nickelodeon.
Edgy movies from the beginning -- with one of the brothers quoted as saying "the headlines of today are the movies of tomorrow." True enough. From the first talkies to RIN-TIN-TIN to CASABLANCA. From DIRTY HARRY To HARRY POTTER to SWEENY TODD.
You pick up what was important from history before your birth. And, then you remember history as you turn the pages after your birth.
One of the most significant movies for me was the verbally violent, mind-bleeping WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. My mother and stepfather emulated the couple. My tall, dark handsome pedophile stepfather met my schizophrenic, suicidal, alcoholic mom on stage, and, as I understand it, from the vague writing of a newspaper clipping I found, my real dad was cuckolded while working backstage on scenery. My stepfather used to "joke" that "Your mother and I had so much fun fighting on stage, we decided to try it for real." He would say to me, in front of her, that while she wanted to look like Elizabeth Taylor, I actually looked more like the actress. And, then he would caress my butt. They did -- especially on stage -- favor the famous acting couple. And the whole scene -- off stage -- was terribly confusing for a young girl whose mind and body were taken. I saw the movie several times and I read the screenplay, searching for some direction, some clues to comprehend What is really going on here? Like the screenplay insinuated, the dialog was invented as it went along, the intention was to become cruel trickery, accented by boorish laughter, sex play, and violent outbursts.
My stepfather's motivation? Even as a kid, I opened my consciousness to comprehend what that could possibly be. His cousin, he told me once, was Lou Costello of Abbott and Costello. And -- long before my stepfather entered my life -- Lou had invited my stepfather to go west to Hollywood with him. My stepfather did not go. Did not become a star. Did not differentiate between his inner anger and what he put out into the world. My younger brother and me, born of the stagehand, were his targets.
I graduated from WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? to the sadistic A CLOCKWORK ORANGE -- some of those scenes still play in my mind. Then, a year later to WHAT'S UP DOC? the madcap Barbra Streisand-Ryan O'Neil comedy. That film was a relief.
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. Long before the movie came out, before Nixon came to office, I'd decided to become a journalist, like when I was seven...but for many other young people, this movie clinched it.
Warner Brothers didn't dabble much in magic and comedy, mostly in the dark truth of the times. Which makes me -- all the more -- want to catch a movie I've missed -- HARRY POTTER.
The wizardry of this book, YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS, is that you do, you do remember as you turn the pages and read, you do remember this.

Labels: alcoholic, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, book review, HARRY POTTER., mother, movies, pedophile, schizophrenic, stepfather, transcending the trauma, YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS

October 11, 2008
One of the books I treasured when I was a kid was Alan Paton's TOO LATE THE PHALAROPE. Set in Paton's South Africa, we see a white policeman fall in love with a native girl. The affair is discovered and he is betrayed and reported. The book broke my heart open. I was too young to understand about romantic love. But I did know injustice. My real dad -- and everything about him, stories, pictures, his name -- were severed from my life when I was five -- forever -- by my mother and stepfather. I understand the reasons why my mother and stepfather did what they did, so my heart forgives them -- but I am not sure that I can forgive what they did -- the rapes, the violence, the alcoholism, the suicide attempts, the abandonment, the neglect.
What I find most amazing is I've been thinking about forgiveness lately. So I looked up the word Forgiveness in the OXFORD DICTIONARY OF MODERN QUOTATIONS, 3rd. Ed. There were a handful of choices, and I immediately went to the one in the index marked "until we f." It was a powerful quote by Paton -- marked an unrecognizable PATO in the index -- and it was from TOO LATE THE PHALAROPE:
"When a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive."
As I write, I am also assimilating the first visit of longer than a half-hour I've had with my younger brother -- born of the same father as I -- in probably fifteen years. We talked for nearly six hours today, sharing stories, filling in the gaps, and finding puzzle pieces that fit that one had but the other didn't.
I was filled with fear as I drove to meet him -- the child fear -- because to see him would mean all the old energy and the old scenes would come flooding back. I promised myself I would be real and I would stay in that vibration of light.
One wonderful thing about my brother. He has played the piano since he was three. And, he has been living in my parents' home for the last year and a half, giving classes to people in piano, yoga, Spanish. I said to him, "You are immensely talented and all that violence and abuse kept you from sharing your music with the world. " And I burst into loud, gasping tears. Not pretty in a restaurant, but very real.
And then he got it. I have always loved and treasured him -- we were trapped apart by the violence. Not any more.
"When a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive."
I am gently moved into a place of forgiveness.

Labels: alcoholism, brother, forgiveness, mothers, OXFORD DICTIONARY OF MODERN QUOTATIONS, rape, stepfather, talent, TOO LATE THE PHALAROPE, transcending the trauma, violence

Cookbooks are beautiful. I have two stacks on top of my refrigerator of current cookbooks, but I never open them.
One book I received today was -- at first blush -- way too cute. COOK UP A COOKBOOK: CREATE YOUR OWN RECIPE BOOK FROM SCRATCH. Open the front of the book -- which is more like a box with an old-fashioned ribbon -- and you see instructions on how to create your own chef's hat. Um, skipping that. But when I burrowed through the labels and chef's tip cards, and found a little book -- and discovered the brilliant idea of interviewing loved ones about their special recipes. Oh, now that convinced me to maybe go for it, create my own cookbook! Or at least collect a few recipes.
I only have two that I love. One comes from my stepfather's family. I'm a little loose on details -- hence the desire to interview -- although really only the recipe survives. It's a list of ingredients for lasagna that I have made every Christmas since I moved away from my parents' home, and it is killer. It's all in the sauce. Or saw-us, as I grew up saying it. A list of ingredients typed on my mother's old Remington, splattered with decades of tomato paste. When the holidays draw near, certain neighbors come round, asking for a plate of lasagna. A plate of happiness...? You bet!
It's family tradition -- a big pot of sauce simmering on the stove -- a long wooden spoon resting nearby. Each of us furtively slipping the spoon into the sauce, tasting, adding oregano or garlic salt or red pepper to our taste, a collaborative effort -- as secret as everything else in our house. But oh so incredibly tasty!
It took hours to cook, typical, but in this case, not an issue. Mom was an amazing cook, but we rarely ate before midnight. She would begin with a recipe like Beef Stroganoff or Veal Parmigianna early afternoon, the ingredients laying about on cutting boards, her trail easy to trace of food-stained spoons, plates, measuring cups. My stepfather following after her, swearing up a storm at the mess. Mom, cooking while on the phone, refilling her wine glass until the new liter of Gallo wine would grow empty. We kids would circle, asking when dinner would be done, resorting to pulling little half-cooked bites out of the simmering food. And finally giving up, and going to bed. Many nights we would hear the sound of breaking glass. In the morning the mess would still be there in the kitchen, evidence something amazing had happened in that room.
But there is some sweetness -- a Cheesecake Pie -- that I frequently bake. It too is a favorite -- and there's just over a half-cup of sugar in it. The recipe is written in my mother's handwriting on a yellowed, battered notecard.
I will share it, and you'll have to forgive me for not getting the recipe format perfectly right -- there's info on that in the COOK UP A COOKBOOK book. Right now, I just want to make my midnight deadline:
Ingredients for the pie:
1 graham cracker crust
1 8 ounce pkg of cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbl lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
dash salt
2 eggs
Ingredients for topping:
1 cup sour cream
2 tbl sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Directions:
For pie filling:
Beat cream cheese until fluffy, gradually blending in 1/2 cup sugar, lemon juice, vanilla and salt. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each.
Pour filling into crust. Bake in slow 325-degree oven, 25 to 30 minutes or until set
Topping:
Combine sour cream, sugar, vanilla. Spoon over top of pie. Bake ten minutes longer. Cool. Chill.

Enjoy the cool sweetness! My gift to you.

Labels: books, Cheesecake Pie, COOK UP A COOKBOOK, cookbook, lasagna, mothers, stepfather