1019 TWINKLE TWINKLE—REVISITED 13

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Back in the car, Thanksgiving is just around the corner.   As Jennie and Jack co-parent a jovial, openly affectionate family, my parents' awareness of thankfulness is palpable while preparing for the holiday season ahead.

Perhaps while riding along, Jack reminisces about being an immigrant lad, whose family of five had once called the storage room behind his parents' deli—home.  Then, let's surmise that Jack's recollections jog Jennie's mind to open up about the fact that she'd never owned a real doll to cradle in her arms nor has she forgotten that dining room day bed, which had offered a young woman not a moment of privacy from her mother, father, and four, rambunctious brothers.  In addition to enjoying each other, their two little daughters, both extended families, a wide assortment of friends, and good health, Jennie and Jack share a deep appreciation for their hard won sense of economic security.

While you and I watch my healthy, young parents conversing and laughing as their car approaches the shopping district, there's no doubt that their future shines bright.  In fact, upon reaching the grocery store where Jack parallel parks his shiny, black sedan, my parents feel so above misfortune that no ominous instinct arises to warn them that FATE will electrify their sense of emotional security in a darkly unpredictable manner before nightfall.

As for me, upon awakening on that same November morning in 1946, I, too, had enjoyed the start of an ordinary day.  And if, when day turns to night, I sleep fitfully, there’ll be no way for me to have a clue that changing circumstances will alter the ‘natural’ course of my development from that day to this.

At the tender age of not quite three, I'll not begin to surmise how many of my future reactions and decisions will be based in the domino effect that destiny has in store for my family when tragedy strikes within seconds after my parents, arms laden with groceries, return.

As Mom's, Dad's and Grandma's sense of security is about to be rocked to the core, it's easy to see why none will fathom the depth—and far reaching effects—of tragedy upon my character traits as my development shifts away from that which psychologists have classically considered early childhood's natural path.  Over most of my life, the fact that my emotional foundation suffered a serious crack will be so deeply repressed that no one will have reason to suspect my sunny disposition of harboring PTSD except for the fact that for many years I'd walked around scratching my arms every bit as raw as the vulnerability buried deep within my mind …