Maybe it’s a mistake to call them “traumas.” Maybe they’re more like “close calls” or “tight squeezes.” The car that only glancingly grazed yours. The food that made you throw it back up before it made you seriously ill. The fall that narrowly missed dropping you on something sharp.
We were on one of our ill-advised and not-quite-prepared when we came late at night to a narrow road through a canyon. It was longer than we thought (than my chance-taking father thought) and had no place to stop for the night. Normally we would unfold the tent trailer in a field or gravel pit. But there were only pull-outs occasionally, maybe to let cars pass each other. A big storm came up this valley. Our father was too exhausted to cope.
We pulled out in a place barely big enough and slept while the storm went crashing through. In the morning when we broke camp and moved on, the next pull-out was filled by a giant boulder that had fallen in the night. It could have fallen on us. It didn’t.
We were not killed or even hurt. We emerged from the canyon and found a place to have a proper breakfast instead of those little boxes of cereal that came in a assorted pack. We didn’t talk about it. We never talked about anything. We just accepted fate and went on.
In middle age I was invited to dinner at a cousin’s but dinner was fashionably late, eight o’clock, on a dark and rainy night near Seattle. I was a little lost and realized I had to turn around, so looked for a good place. An empty parking lot showed up. I started to drive into it and stopped with my front bumper hanging over the edge — it was a hole, a black hole, unmarked, no lights. My headlights shown out into space. Jolted with adrenaline, I was very careful to put the car in reverse, went on, and got to my cousin’s house.
I didn’t tell them. They never believed anything I told them because their lives were so controlled and confined, but maybe I didn’t understand them. There was no dinner. It was only dessert. I didn’t tell them I had expected a meal. I stopped at McDonalds on the way home. One learns to take care of oneself.
The Sixties on the rez were full of close calls because of hostile people, big unmanageable animals, machinery that malfunctioned, and severe weather on the high prairie. This was true for everyone. It was a condition of life and every precaution was taken. But mostly I was dependent on my powerful male partner to set goals and protect us while in pursuit of them. This is what childhood had taught me life was like. I believed it.
Gradually, I began to realize I was saving us now and then. I began to switch over to being the safe-guarder, the explainer, which worked when we talked about things. But then we stopped doing that, just taking our clues from what we were doing and taking chances because the goals were big daring acts like pouring bronze and horseback hunting in the Rockies. We both took damage but his was worse because he was older.
Yet I was the one who began to break down. Tears, hiding, and disguised depression. Physical glitches. Appeals to others who didn’t want to talk about it and had nothing to offer. Child’s solutions. Then divorce. But first a winter alone on the little Two Med ranch with five horses and two cats. One cat died — specs of blood on the snow and imprints of big wings.
It was cold and the plumbing froze. I laughed and peed in a bucket. The fence broke down and I had to wade the top wire across the creek while the horses watched carefully, wondering whether they should leave. It was spring when I finally left. Physically. Mentally and emotionally, etc., I’m still there. It proved I could cope, all by myself. I learned to talk to myself. Then write.
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