Part 5 The TRAGIC TALE: Twilight Saga of Biblical Proportions

Did you ever have a life defining moment when things just didn't seem to go your way.  When searing pain and bitter disappointment seemed to build a nest in your heart. Those times when you feel let down or stabbed in the back by someone close whether a parent, a spouse, a brother, a sister, or a best friend. Why do those wounds seem to be the worst, as if a dagger had been plunged into your heart and irreparably ripped open. Why do these particular wounds feel like it may take forever to heal? I think the reason things like betrayal, abandonment and wounds (especially from those close to us) hurt so bad is because we were created for close connections. We were designed and wired for close intimate relationships and have this expectation that love will protect and that love is forever. What a crushing blow to discover that as humans we are fickle and committed more to the protection of self at any cost, than the tremendous cost that true love demands... 

Since we live in this tension of constantly being let down, I guess as humans, we have to figure out how to cope with disappointments and where to turn for healing for these lingering wounds... Perhaps this is why some of the deepest scares are those bore by children, because their emotional capacity is not yet developed to handle abuse, cruelty and exploitation at the hands of those they placed so much trust.

Yep, kids are especially fragile.

It was hot and dry at Salton Sea, but an invisible tornado of emotional destruction was headed towards the Marina as the Dahlins prepared to depart their 4 inglorious days of camping. The boys were fighting for places in the car, Mrs. D was yelling, "Under pain of mortal sin" beckoning all those that couldn't squeeze into the Dodge to join her and the girls to experience another three hours of "Shake 'N Bake" in the dreaded  trailer. Meanwhile, Dooh-Dooh Pants was intentionally passing gas as a means of terrorism that instigated a fight among the Wolf Pack as hot sweaty bodies pressed up against windows in the over-packed station wagon.

Meanwhile, Markie D happily bounded out the Diner with his red Popsicle. The four ounces of liquid and sugar would probably help him survive the terrible ride home bouncing around in the the hot trailer among the junk and gas fumes.

With both eyes focused on his ice-cold Popsicle, Markie D reached up and grabbed the handle of the trailer (that he was forced to ride in by his older brothers).

NOTHING! He grabbed nothing, but a fist full of air. The trailer had vanished! Bam, just as if it had been sucked into the tractor beam of an alien spaceship.  In panic he looked up into the troposphere, but could not see a UFO!
(Now back to first person) 

It was happening...I was begin erased. I looked up and saw the caravan of bodies stuffed in the old Dodge and trailer pulling out of the parking lot. THEY HAD LEFT ME BEHIND! Was this a cruel trick? Did they plan this? Was it a conspiracy to get rid of me? Why did mom let them leave without me?

DIDN'T ANYONE CARE? Was I just refuge like the dirt washed off all those dirty bodies to run waste in the gutter. Not a single lick of my red Popsicle, I ran up the slight incline of the marina onto the two lane highway after my family. They were moving slow, I thought I could catch 'em. I ran as fast as the legs of a 9-year-old could run, but the lights on the back of that trailer got smaller and smaller and smaller. I stood and watched.

This was before the era of 911 and cell phones. I was left to die in the desert. I stood on that hot asphalt and stared at the fading tail lights of my departing family until they had completely disappeared. My world was small and I knew I lived in Venice, but nothing more than that. I was lost, alone and abandoned.

I couldn't take one lick of my red Popsicle as I sadly shuffled back to the staging area - at the curb outside the Diner. I sat on the curb and sorely missed my family - sure that I would never see them again. I wondered if this is what Joseph (in the Bible) felt like when his older brothers and sold him into slavery and left him stranded in the desert. I was sure someone would steal me and I would be held prisoner to a wondering band of Salton-Sea-ites.

I sat on the curb as the melting red dye dripped down my arm and pooled into a puddle of red and dirt next to my feet.  I sat. I sat holding my red stick as though it was the last remaining remnant of my family. I would not let go of my little red Popsicle stick.

I knew one prayer, "The Our Father" but was too choked up to squeese one syllable out of my parched dry lips. I cried and sat as TWILIGHT turned to horrid dusk!  Me and my Popsicle stick and my puddle of red mud that had dripped from my elbow. This was probably the most pathetic sight recorded in the history of the universe. An blonde haired aborigine with one clean red streak that ran from my tight fist of my right hand to tip of my elbow. My heart felt like it was begin squeezed in a vice as I felt my existence fade.

LEFT!
        ALONE!
                  ABANDONED!
                                     FORGOTTEN!

 I wanted to go back to the crazy, dysfunctional, wonderful family that had let all the monkeys out of the zoo.

I sat and cried until I had no more moisture left in my body to produce any more tears... "drenched to the bone." The hardest part, I guess, was that nobody noticed!

 

"The times they are, a changing" 

At least for me they were. 

I reckon that the universal question that we all have to wrap our minds around at some point in our lives is: Why do bad things happen to good people?