Chap. 5 — When Innocence Went Into Hiding
The thread begins to weave backward, into the earliest moment I can name: when wonder was met with fear, and innocence slipped into hiding.
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There are moments when survival hangs by something thinner than a thread—a thread of grace we cannot see, but that somehow holds.
I was about five when I first sensed that something was terribly wrong, though I had no words for it. The world that had once felt safe—or at least not consciously unsafe—began to flicker with moments that made no sense to my young heart. At that tender age, the illusion of safety cracked wide open.
I was playing outside on the swing that hung from a sturdy wooden trestle, where thick grapevines climbed and curled. Swinging brought me joy—it felt like flying, like laughter made visible.
I don’t remember exactly when it began, but at some point in my young life, I started seeing what I called elves lingering in the grass along the fence. Some might call them fairies or sprites. Regardless of the name, I loved them. They were my companions—gentle, magical, and real to me in a way nothing else was.
On this particular day, I was wearing a flowered dress with anklets and dainty little shoes. I felt beautiful, alive, and full of wonder. As I soared back and forth on the swing, I suddenly wanted to share my delight with someone. I wanted to tell my mother about the elves.
I slowed the swing, hopped off, and hurried exuberantly through the door, glowing with excitement. “Mommy, guess what! I can see elves!” I said, fully present in my wonder, wanting only to share something beautiful.
We lived in a coal patch in Pennsylvania called Boston Run. Our kitchen was in the basement, with a screen door leading out to the yard where I spent most of my time when the weather allowed. The house always seemed dim. The kitchen was where everything happened. My mother was usually there—cooking on the coal stove, hauling heavy buckets of coal from the bin, heating water for baths, or washing clothes in the wringer washer. It was hard, dirty work, and she was always busy.
She turned from the stove, her face sharp with something I didn’t yet recognize: anger. “If you keep talking like that,” she snapped, “they’ll lock you up!”
A false self begins
I didn’t know who "they" were, the ones who would lock me up. I didn’t need to. Her fury pierced straight through my joy. In an instant, everything in me shifted.
That moment—seventy-one years later—I would remember as the one when my innocence went into hiding.
My little body, once full of magic and wonder, froze. It was the first trauma I can recall. There may have been others before it, but this is the moment I can name—the moment my joy, my laughter, and my creativity began to vanish. I stopped laughing. I stopped speaking unless necessary. I didn’t know what might trigger my mother’s rage, so I watched her closely, always on alert.
I didn’t understand why she was so harsh with such a sweet child. But I knew that sweetness wasn’t safe. I began to build a false self in order to survive. The part of me who saw elves faded into the background. The part who knew how to play and imagine and feel … went into hiding.
And I became hyper-vigilant.
Up until then, I probably lived mostly in a child's world, although I surmise there were many other incidents of shouting between my mother and father that I successfully, for a time anyway, blocked from awareness.
I lived in a world of fantasy. Once I met the elves and heard of the Sandman and Tooth Fairy, I believed it all was real. There was a Sandman; there was a Tooth Fairy in this little girl’s mind. I had a doll and little china dishes that I played with. Mostly, it was my swing that gave me joy—and being with the elves.
That one great event that shattered my innocence then became a series of ongoing small, almost imperceptible moments that began to pile on top of each other, heavier and heavier, until it became impossible not to notice.
A slammed door. A broken glass. The unpredictable silence that followed a fight—sometimes heavier than the screaming had been.
I didn’t have a name for the fear that moved into my chest and made itself at home. I only knew that everything inside me felt different. Hyperaware. Watchful. As if I’d been handed a job I never applied for—to be ready, always, for what might come next.
When innocence went into hiding, I didn’t even realize it at first. I thought I was just growing up, becoming more “mature,” as adults called it when they noticed I was quieter, more serious than other kids. I didn’t understand that I was adapting to survive—picking up on the unspoken rules of the house: Don’t make noise. Don’t ask questions. Don’t need anything.
It would be many years before I understood that what had disappeared was not just my innocence—it was my sense of belonging to a world that was inherently safe.
But even in those early years, there was something else alive inside me too: a flicker of hope, a whisper I couldn’t quite hear but could somehow feel.
A thread of grace, impossibly thin, impossibly strong, weaving through the darkness. Holding me when I didn’t know I was being held.
Even then, I was not truly alone.
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