Chapter 2
Insight
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From the age of two until six we lived in the neighborhood of the famed Angelina Heights above Los Angeles. The small quarter with its run-down Victorian houses was founded in 1886. The hilltop area had a stunning view of the Los Angeles basin and could be reached by the Temple Street Cable Railway, which lumbered up its steep hills. Most of the ornately gabled houses in the historic district were concentrated on Carroll Avenue, my street. Their stardom rose quickly in the thirties when the movie industry used them as backdrops for many films. It took on more fame when movie stars such as Gloria Swanson and Mary Pickford, of the silent film era, packed their trunks and took up residence.
However, by the time my family moved there, they were run-down and in disrepair. It was the first address I was to memorize: 1330 1/3 Carroll Avenue. We weren’t well-off enough to be in the main house. No, we were around back where a small apartment was hastily put together under the main house. World War II was when we moved to Angelina Heights, and Daddy was serving in a different theater in Europe. Fortunately, we were near supportive relatives who lived on Edgeware Road and in the area near Echo Park, where we gathered to picnic and play. For me, those were happy days. Mama sang in the choir at church, Daddy came home from the war, and my buddy, Bruce, was my favorite playmate. Just before my seventh birthday, we moved away from the enchanted neighborhood of Carroll Avenue. At first, it seemed like a wonderful move. Bruce and I each got a bedroom of our very own. His was extra special. It had a back door escape to the backyard and an enormous field of hay. For me, I spent a lot of time loving my new baby-doll. She was a gift for my seventh birthday. It’s the only time I can remember having a doll. She was a plump little thing with curly golden-brown hair. She wore a flowery dress with a little pink bow at her neckline. I don’t remember whose dog it was that got into my room; that jumped up on my bed; that snarled and tore apart my dolly, but the end result was that the back of her head was ripped off, and there were little curls all over my bedroom floor! That heartbreaking event was a foretelling of future years to come. Mistakes were made and life changed drastically. Daddy had, what is now called, PTS (post-traumatic stress syndrome). He couldn’t reconcile in his mind the terrors he experienced in the war. His drinking became impossible for our beautiful mother, and she fell from the “frying pan into the flames of the fire.” From that point on, until I was twelve, our lives were shattered. Gratefully, the torrential storm passed and the waters of life smoothed out for all of us, but my childhood had been shredded. In the following years, as I matured in my faith, I came upon this scripture: “I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army, which I sent among you.” Joel 2:25 When I read that scripture, I looked up to God and said with painful angst, “How can you do that? How can you give me back the lost days of my childhood?” I remembered, at once, that God said if we ask for wisdom, He will give it to us “abundantly.” Well, I was asking, and a bit defiantly, I might add. There definitely was a “root of bitterness” in my soul over the torments that haunted my childhood. I believed that life for me as a child was traumatic much of the time. The list of abuses and close calls was long. It wasn’t my daddy. He never spanked me, not even once. Although one time he did chase me around the dining room table. I quickly ducked under the table, but he swiftly cut me off on the other side and I started to giggle as I looked up into his broad, gentle grin. Mom was the stern disciplinarian, and there were plenty of spankings, but she, too, never hurt me. The harsh abuse in my life came from the enemy of all our souls. It was that wicked entity that wrangled into our lives and beat us down. During those awful years, I felt whipped around like cat being flung against the bark of a tree. Sometimes I would grab on with all fours, other times I had the wind knocked out of me. It wasn’t just me. It was a time of brutality for our whole family. ~~~~~~~~ |
When I asked God the question of how He could repair the damage done to my childhood, it was as if He said, “Well, my child, now that you ask…” and then He took me on three healing journeys.
The first came in a surprising way. One spring I was asked to sing for a friend’s wedding. As a Thank You gift, she gave me a hand-painted porcelain dish. Painted on it was a little girl with long, golden-brown curls. She wore a plaid jumper, much like the one my grandma made for me. Her tiny shoes were black, shiny, patent-leather, and her anklets were white and lacey. I recalled having shoes and anklets just like that as a child. The little girl on the dish looked straight at me and when I looked into her eyes, mine filled with tears. She smiled as she held onto the stem of a lupine flower, rich with blue blossoms. What wasn’t like me in the painted dish was her fairy wings. She could easily fly away from danger. Nonetheless, that little girl looked like me when I was a sweet child. The little girl reminded me of the many times we went to Echo Park near Angelina Heights in Los Angeles. I chased the ducks as they quacked along the shoreline, and my heart thrilled to see the beautiful, graceful swans majestically paddle their way across the lake. Springtime at Echo Park brought the May Day pole dance. My cousins, Fredda and Georgia, and I twirled happily as we danced around the May Day pole braiding the long, brightly colored, satin ribbons. Those were happy times. Another happy time was getting to bounce atop my daddy’s shoulders on our way to the Friday night movies. Buddy, my brother, held onto Mom’s and Dad’s hands as they skipped him through the air between them. We joyfully filled the evening air with lots of giggles. Thank you, my friend, for the pretty plate that brought back such sweet memories. Thank you, Lord, for showing me You have the power to “make all things new.” The second gift of restoration came along a short time later when I was teaching a “Christian Charm” class to young girls who were moving up from elementary to middle school. When the class was over a sweet pre-teen, Tara Barth, gave me a Thank You gift. It was a pewter cross. On the cross was a figurine of a little girl holding up an offering of flowers. My young student had no idea what the timing of that cross meant to me. I know it was the loving Spirit of God using Tara to heal my brokenness. To complete my time of healing, there was a third gift. I was doing a little shopping at the Northgate Mall in Seattle and took the time to meander through an art exhibit under the skylight of the marketplace corridor. One bin was filled with several framed batiks. As I viewed the collection, one batik, in particular, caught my eye. The colorful geometric shapes of a house led the eye to a little girl, again, with golden-brown hair holding up a bouquet of wildflowers. At an open doorway, gentle hands, in front of an aproned dress, reached down to receive the gift. To me, they were the accepting hands of a mother. That’s what we did as children on May Day. We gathered flowers from the neighborhood and took them to our mamas. Without a doubt, I knew what the Lord was saying to me, and I stood there with tears streaming down my face. He did it. He restored the “days of my youth the cankerworm destroyed!” My childhood was healed and restored. The Good Lord was telling me in His series of three, that through all my childhood years, He was with me, loving and guiding me, and yes, protecting me. [Thank you, Lord, for your tender mercies.] He replaced heartache with precious memories. |
MY BEST BUDDY, BRUCE, AND ME
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1330 CARROLL AVE., ANGELINA HEIGHTS, LOS ANGELES, CA
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