Hearing The Mermaids Sing

He covers his sunlit towhead with one of his blankies and loosens glistening giggles.

And I remember what it is to hide. Hiding, a thing of childhood, joyful for this boy of three with his shining towhead appearing sprinkled with glitter in the sunlight and the bubbling raspy giggles he lets loose as he covers and uncovers his shimmering head with his beloved blankie.

I learned to hide from the monster who pursued me. At times, the monster was too angry, too quick, and I had no time to hide. Other times, there was only time to seek refuge behind rustling silk dresses, a molting mink, and piled up shoe boxes—only to be yanked out by an arm, thrown across a room before the whipping began. On rare occasions, there was time to make it to the small bedroom on the third floor where there was a closet over the stairs. The floor of the closet was raised and filled with boxes of junk. The boxes created a barricade against the monster my mother often became when she drank. Though she drank daily, always drunk by the time the evening news came on, the monster did not appear every day. On any particular day, if the monster’s rage began as a slow simmer, I would silently slip away to that closet, crawl over the boxes, and listen as the rage of the drunken monster began boiling below, hoping the stomping monster did not make her way up to the third floor. That third-floor closet never failed. I never allowed myself to breathe in the safety of that third floor over the stairs closet until long after the sounds of raging below stopped. Then, closing my eyes, enjoying the silence, my muscles beginning to relax, I would breathe in the safety found in the darkness.
By the time I was twelve, I had outgrown the safe haven of the third-floor closet.  There was no way to crawl over the boxes without knocking them over and making noise. My hiding place lost; I had to find a new one. One I created—not truly safe or a hiding spot, but an escape. A way to stand and take the whippings of yardsticks, wooden then metal, without a cry or a whimper, to use my mind to create an escape, a place my body could not go, yet my mind could fly in moments to the safety of silent blackness.

This little three-year-old towheaded boy, finished with his hiding game, asks for cold, frozen, blueberries. Upon discovering there are no cold blueberries left, he wails. A grieving wail with fat tears. It is tragic, this absence of cold blueberries. And all I can do is find a distraction for him. But I smile and I am teary eyed at this dramatic switch from joyous laughter to tragic grieving loss of cold blueberries because he knows he is safe. He can go from laughter to tears because he does not doubt his safety here in this place among these hearts within this room filled with sunshine.

Later, when I hug and kiss him goodnight, I say a silent prayer that he never knows what it is to seek safety in darkness and only ever knows what it is to feel the safety offered in the warmth of sunshine.