A list of traumas

Trauma #1: I was delivered from the womb violently and injured in the process.. It was a perfectly normal deliver going at a normal pace until some sick sadist of an OB GYN rammed steel forceps up into my poor mother, clamped them on my head and dragged me out. My head was marked and misshapen in the process. I've always been uneven - one bad eye, only good with one hand, crooked teeth.  I think it is at least partially due to the fact that I was attacked and at the moment of birth and slightly brain damaged. I have some CTE.

Trauma #2: my father got into a fight with some guys on my way home from the hospital and got thrown in jail.  My mom brought me back to their studio apartment in Long Beach by herself, probably on the Red Car. I wouldn't stop screaming,  she couldn't stop crying. She had been trying to get me to nurse but it wasn't working.  She called her best friend in hysterics.  My "Aunt" Lola came straight away, brought bottles and formula, got me settle down. Got my mom settled down and sent her husband to bail Smitty out of jail.  There is a special place in heaven for that woman.

That was, what? Day 3? 4

By the time I was 3, my father had broken his back in a construction accident, long before there was workers comp. My mom went to work cleaning in a factory while he healed. Then she slipped on a wet floor and cracked her tailbone.  She also went on to have two more children, moved several times to keep ahead of the bills, and suffer through serious health issues. 

We moved to Bloomington California to be near my mom's sister when I was about 4 years old. It was a rough neighborhood. Our next door neighbor was a member of the original Hells Angels. The Angels originally formed in San Bernadino and this guy was a member. One night, he started beating his girlfriend with a chain on the street. She ran to our door and tried to get in but my mom locked her out. He almost beat her to death in our front yard. 

My dad went to prison before I was born. My mom made him join Alcoholics Anonymous when he got out. He sponsored other ex-cons in AA and occasionally let them crash at our house. I barely remember this, but I do remember liking the people my dad brought to the house.

My dad and his brother got into a wildly violent fistfight in our house one night. My mom took my brother and I into the closet to hide. I could hear thumps and yelling and things breaking through the walls. 

My parents fought like tigers.

I walked up behind a guy pitching horseshoes, got hit in the heal and knocked out cols.

I had my tonsils out and spent 2 nights in the hospital. 

We moved at least a half dozen times. 

All this happened before I was in kindergarten. I'm sure there was more. Mom died before she got a chance to tell the whole story.  I wish I had asked her sooner. I had just sent my youngest child off to college when she died and could finally pay her the attention she deserved but never expected. I didn't get a chance to give it to her.

Harmonic

  I was blessed to grow up immersed in musical harmony.  My mother and all 9 of her siblings sang beautifully.  No family gathering was complete without a couple of hymns sung round the piano in 4 part harmony. My cousin, the family proto-hippie, had an impressive record collection. I'd sneak into his room and wear out his copy of Buffalo Springfield Retrospective.  He introduced me to The Byrds, which led me to Crosby, Stills & Nash (and eventually Young.) Those tight, twisting  harmonies felt like family to me. They felt like home. 

David Crosby talked about how hard it is to sing the middle part, to hold your note and resist the pull from two different directions. If you can pull it off, it's the place where the magic happens. When it's just right, the infinite overtones open, an experience I've had exactly once and will never forget. Everything is energy. Energy is vibration. When vibration is perfectly aligned, it creates perfect harmony, which is the closest I've come to God. Im grateful to people like David Crosby who taught me how to hear it.