by John Lynch
To my credit, I was over halfway through the giant cake before it became oppressive. I was now slowly and reluctantly wadding it into my mouth. I started feeling sick two-thirds of the way through … and tossed the rest in a dumpster several feet away.
I wandered around to the front, a boy dazed by sugar and disappointment. What just happened? I thought, as I stared at the road, slowly weaving my bike through the neighborhoods toward home. What will I tell Dad about the nickels? Someday he’s going to want to see how the collection is going. Why did I do that? What is wrong with me?
But, later that evening, an even deeper question worked its way to the surface:
Why didn’t that work today? Why didn’t that cheesecake make me happier?
I don’t think either of my parents ever heard this story. I can’t remember how I explained the missing nickels. But I walked forward from that day, on a more urgent mission—to find what food, entertainment, activity, or repetition of activity would satisfy me long enough to satisfy this unmet urge inside me.
John, I do not want to rub this in; but if you’d held onto those Indian head nickels, you could buy everyone in Upland a cheesecake … once a month … for the rest of their lives.
Trying to solve this internal craving will be the singular driving force for decades of your life. It will harm you more than any person can. It will break your heart. One day, no time soon, you will find what your longing and unmet urges are calling for. Then, you will begin to learn what gives food its maximum taste, experiences their full measure of joy, and sunsets their full beauty. I’m right here. Though you will go into some very strange places, this obsession will not destroy you. One day, your willingness to articulate your battle with it will make you safe and real and trusted to others. Until that time, you will crave the Jack in the Box taco combo like few things on earth. I’d say you could do worse, but I’m not sure I’d be accurate. …
1964
These days I care mostly about running fast, listening to Vin Scully describe the Dodgers on the radio and convincing enchanting Lucille Engle to like me. Orange trees still outnumber homes. Life is pretty idyllic.
Except my fifth-grade class is run by this tough kid.
He has two older brothers who, for all I know, are already in prison. Or should be. I don’t yet know much about evil; but his family is evil. Carl has beaten up three kids in our class … and it’s only October. He doesn’t hit me because he’s entertained by me.
One day he informs me we are to meet at the railroad tracks this coming Saturday morning. These particular tracks run through the center of town, ending at an orange-packing plant. For us kids, that plant is a glorious place. Upland is one of the great citrus hubs. Dozens of open-topped freight cars are three-quarters filled with oranges, waiting to be sent out to places like Billings or Topeka. On late afternoons, after cul-de-sac Wiffle ball or front-yard football, dozens of us could be found lying on our backs inside train cars filled with huge, nearly fluorescent oranges. The workers didn’t even care we were in there. There were so many oranges. We’d eat them until our mouths burned. Nobody had scurvy in our neighborhood.
On this day, like six-dozen times before, I climb the train’s steel ladder and dive into orange heaven. But it’s early Saturday morning. No one else is yet in the cars. Carl follows me in. He leans slowly against the back wall, saying nothing. He’s staring at me, intensely. I am experiencing the sensation of being trapped for the first time in my life.
He slowly informs me what he will now do to me, and what I will now do to him—twisted perversion I’ve never before heard or thought of.
… That morning changes my life. I remember little of what happened after emerging from that boxcar: how I got home, or what I did when I got there. I have no memories of Carl after that morning. I do carry this embedded maxim, which has clung to me like a wet sweater all my life:
“No one must ever know what happened. I will go this alone. I must find a way to never think about this again. I will be all right. I will be all right. …”
And a previously innocent and playful kid walks with a limp from that thought on.
I’m still funny. I still seem like a normal kid. I will pitch on my town’s Little League All-Star team. Lucille Engle will like me. But something insidious is going on inside. All alone. Inside.
I’ve discovered since, there is a word for this silent limp:
Shame.
Awakening: Guilt says I’ve done something wrong. Shame hisses there’s something uniquely, irrevocably and fundamentally wrong with me.
Shame tries to convince us that we caused the evil which happened to us. It continually whispers if anyone could know the truth about who we are, they would leave or pity us. So we are left to bluff and posture, guard and defend. Shame teaches us to perform for God’s acceptance, to keep paying for something we eventually can no longer even name.
It will take forty years before I risk even a hint to anyone that something happened back there.
The boxcars still stand. Rusting and silent. A visible and definable part of Upland’s past. My past. I’ve driven past them dozens of times, bringing my family to see the town of my childhood. No one in our car ever noticed me staring at those boxcars as we drove by.
Decades after that day in the boxcar, I cling to this:
Jesus, you make no mistakes; you make even better beauty out of the most heinous. You never left my side. You hated it more than I did. You give me dignity. You continue to stand with me in the arena to protect my heart and reputation. You are redeeming and will redeem all this damage. You died to take away the power of this shame. Jesus, you dropped everything to stand over me the day it all turned dark. …
1964
Christmas is the best holiday for kids. Hands down.
… But Halloween is the coolest.
In my childhood, all the kids wore their costumes to school. All day! And there was no political rightness to navigate. Nearly every ethnicity and station in society was represented and welcomed. Indian chiefs, ghosts, angels, and Vikings played kickball next to minstrels, Moses, belly dancers, sombrero-wearing Spaniards, and hobos.
That year I went as the devil.
Imagine my mom at Coronet’s department store, sorting through all the costumes: cowboys, doctors, astronauts. “Hmmm. Look at this. The devil. Yes, I think that’s the most fitting outfit for my son. I’ll get him the devil costume.”
… I was so proud of her.
Trick or Treat in the ’60s was so different than today’s sanitized “Tribute to Harvest,” or whatever it has become. Our own neighbors created haunted houses, with all manner of horrifying dramatics, designed solely to horrify children. A snarling, snapping German Shepherd might meet us at the door—within feet of us. On a leash, but still showing his teeth. Strangers would leap out of bushes with real axes or shovels in their hands, shouting at us. Then they’d laugh and hide back in the bushes for the next wave of kids. Unexplained explosions and shrieking filled the night air. No wonder my generation ends up in more counseling than any preceding it. …
Old Mr. Dobbs, three houses up our street, was a Halloween legend. An odd, grumpy recluse who on Halloween night came to life. He positioned dry ice and cobwebs all over his compound. You could hear his eerie music and sound effects blocks away. His entire family would dress in black—each with a singular goal of scaring the pee out of children. One might jump from the roof, squirt fake blood on us from a missing arm, and then run off. Or from under a car, one would suddenly grab my foot as I walked up the driveway.
Each year Dobbs made “eyeball soup.” We were certain that neighborhood cats were unwillingly involved in his recipe. … I still am.
Parents didn’t walk with us after, say, age six. Packs of us would roam the neighborhoods; pillowcases in hand, wearing outfits with plastic masks which caused us to keep breathing our own air.
Total strangers gave us candy! Big time candy. We might be handed two full-sized Snicker bars, without a blink.
I’d lay them all out in rows of merit and then stand back to admire my evening’s effort.
… The next day, arriving home from school, most of rows “A” and “B” and some of row “C” were gone.
Gone. Not there. Vanished.
I first blamed my brother. I even blamed my parents. It was a mystery which drug on for months.
Until my dad’s mother passed away.
She lived her last several years with us. She and I were not especially close. Living in our den, she mostly only came out at meal time. She was in her late eighties, which at that time was like being in her late one-hundred-twenties.
One afternoon, as my parents were packing up her belongings, my mom called me into the den. “John, come look at this.” And there, in the top drawer of her desk, were the wrappers and remaining pieces of uneaten candy. My candy.
My grandmother had shuffled into my bedroom when no one was around and filled her spindly, saggy little arms with my candy. She probably had to make several trips. I’m not certain I’ve forgiven her yet.
Somehow, I wound up with her Bible. She had underlined verses and wrote the date next to them. Some of the citations were from back as far as the 1880s. I’d think to myself, “Wow, there wasn’t electric lighting yet. She’d have to read her Bible with a kerosene lamp!” Until one day someone mentioned in passing, “Or, maybe she read it during the day.”
“Ah, yes. Perhaps she read it during the day. Certainly a viable option …”
John, I recently asked your grandmother if she ever regretted taking your candy. These are her exact words: “No. Not once. He was an annoying child. And I do so love the chocolates. No, I have no regrets.”
1965
I won the fifty-yard dash two years in a row at Camp Oaks, up near Big Bear Lake. I still have the ribbons somewhere in my attic. No one had ever won two years in a row. And probably no one had ever made themselves more sickly nervous before a race. The rest of the kids ran because it was fun, or because they thought they had a chance to win. I ran it knowing anything but a win would be tragic. It was what I did, what I was known for. Winning that ribbon would prove for another day that I was enough. Winning it would cause me to be valued and popular. There was no other option. At that age, I thought I might be the fastest boy in my age group, anywhere. My “anywhere” was the size of Camp Oaks and the two hundred some campers on site during my week.
Looking back, none of my friends were there. Most of the camp kids I never saw again. My parents thought it would be a good idea to send me to a camp. When I got home, I proudly displayed my ribbon on the living room table. My parents both nodded and smiled politely. But it wasn’t that “Oh my gosh, you’re amazing!” kind of response. Dad said something like, “See, son? That’s why we send you to camp. Everyone gets to win at something.”
So who was I running for? I didn’t enjoy a thing about the race itself. I hated the nervousness I felt for hours before it. The pushing and shoving directly before the gun sounded was chaotic and ugly. Intimidating bigger kids shuffled the weaker and smaller behind them. The race itself was only terror—two hundred screaming kids, all clawing out of the gate to take away my destiny. The honor after the race was almost nonexistent. Moments after ours, another race started, followed by another. By dinner, most of the day had blurred into one long camper decathlon.
Few seemed to even remember I’d won.
It shouldn’t work like that. Greatness should be rewarded. Greatness should result in happiness. I’m sure many of the “average” kids thought I was living the dream. Turns out we were all kidding ourselves. We were all fighting our own story of insecurity. And insecurity is not solved by achievement. Insecurity is not solved by not worrying about achievement. Insecurity, it turns out, is solved only by believing the truth about how you’re seen by the only one whose opinion ultimately matters. … And he and I were not yet talking.
That evening, lying in my bunk, arms folded behind my head, I felt very alone in the world.
I wish you could hear me tonight. I will watch you repeat this cycle too many hundreds of times. I wish you could have seen what I saw today. You were magnificent! You blew everyone away and kept pulling further ahead. But you keep missing it. You’re already worried about the next race before you receive the ribbon for this one. So soon, you’ll be older and your knees will hurt. You’ll be too heavy to want to sprint from place to place. I made you with this gift to enjoy, now. And you’re missing it.
One day you will let me in. You will discover I do not ascribe to the false story of your unacceptability. Your proving and grinding will be gradually replaced with contentment, as you begin to let me achieve great good in you for others’ benefit. That day is coming. In the meantime, though no one noticed or cared enough today, I did. I’ll show you the tape when you get home. I’ve already showed it around here a number of times. Now go to sleep, my friend. That’s another thing you won’t be able to do as well when you get older.
1965
When my parents hurt my feelings, the biggest threat I could drum up was that I might run away.
One day I told them I was going to run away. Now I had to now actually do it, for at least an afternoon, or I’d forever lose the only real leverage a kid has.
My dad, calling my bluff, gathered up some items, saying, “Here, let me help.”
I packed some sandwiches, another shirt, and a jacket into a grocery bag and walked out the front door, into my future.
They let me walk out! They said goodbye like I was heading across the street to a friend’s house. There were no cell phones back then. They had no way of calling me to beg me back.
I made it as far as the Red Hill Bowling Lanes, four miles away. I spent the afternoon watching people bowl, eating my sandwiches, sitting in the booths above the lanes. It doesn’t take long watching bad bowlers to arrive at the conclusion life on the road might be a bit overrated.
I returned home six hours later. They were out shopping. When they did eventually come home, they acted like nothing had happened. We never talked about it. We just sort of went on. … So much for leverage.
As I grew into a teenager, I began to imagine the day when I would run away. They would deeply regret their capricious use of authority.
I never did it. But over time, the concept itself has become my default button. Only now, nearly fifty years later, my bags are a little bit more sophisticated. But they are packed. You might not know it to look at me. I’ve owned the same home for a quarter century. But almost every day I envision an “out.” You get revealed if you stay in a community long enough. And the community gets revealed too. We can begin to imagine life somewhere else is much better.
It’s all in my head, where you can’t see it.
Maybe I’d go to a beach town. I’d be on a friendly, chatty, waving relationship with dozens of the locals. Stacey and I would know several couples fairly well. But this time I’d play it closer to the vest. I wouldn’t dream nearly so much, risk so much, reveal so much. I’d be known as someone who once did something. But no one would know enough to have my weaknesses revealed.
Awakening: The only one I cannot protect is myself. I must trust the commitment of another.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be free of packed bags. I’m not sure it’s even the point. Grace anticipates mess and ongoing imperfection. If my needs went away, I would never experience the love of others. So, I will always carry junk, unresolved sludge, weakness, failure; things that go bu
mp in the night.
Love eventually finds people who will not let us put our bags into the car. Who will love us for who we are, not who we can present on our best day. It’s a scary risk. It gives something and takes something away. It gives us a place. But it demands us to have a better reason than shame or fear to leave to a place which is not our home.
1966
Among my six favorite days on this planet is the one Dave Barrows and I spent in the summer of 1966. We decided to hitchhike from our home to Dodger Stadium in L.A. We never thought twice of any danger. I mean, we were nearly fourteen! I have no memory of how we got there, but vivid, Technicolor memory of nearly every moment once inside the stadium. The Dodgers were playing the Giants in a doubleheader. One price, two games. Three times the magic!
What we could afford was up in the top row of the stadium. When we finally made our way to our seats, neither of us spoke for a while. We were out of breath and deeply disappointed. Far below, the players looked like ants in uniforms.
Several minutes into trying to convince ourselves these seats would work, we decided to take a huge gamble. We had no game plan. But we would find a way down into the bottom section. The stadium was packed but we had to try. Even if we could only watch close up for an inning or two, it would be worth spending the rest of the day in a basement office with security guards.
We eventually conned our way down to the entrance of the bottom level. We didn’t see anyone asking for tickets so we started our way down toward seats our own parents could never afford.
I think we might have made it. Except this kindly looking older man, wearing a Dodger-blue straw hat called out, “Gentlemen, excuse me. One moment.”
We made the mistake of looking back.
He gestured us toward where he was standing. “May I see your tickets, please?”
“Well, um. You see, our parents are down there and …” Dave took over. “They’ve got our tickets. We told them we’d be right back.”
