Alone

(entry for 8/7/24)

I almost can’t count the number of times I was left alone in the car for long periods of time. Part of me says it was bad parenting, but another part says that it was healthy (for them and for me) that my parents felt comfortable doing what they needed and/or wanted to do even if I was too fearful or too young to participate and had to stay in the car for security purposes.

Sometimes it was night. Sometimes it was in the daytime. The first occasion that I distinctly remember was when I was six. We had just moved to the Loretta Heights section of Denver, and a traveling carnival had come to the area and installed itself on a vacant lot about three or four blocks from our new house. One Saturday night my folks decided to attend and since it was after dark we drove to the location (even though it was so close) and parked there in a parking lot behind one of the rides, rather than walking there from the house. Also it was a cool and breezy evening and walking might have been a tad on the uncomfortable side.

At first we just walked around and observed the rides and listened to the screams as the various machines exerted their g-forces on the participants. About half the rides were intended for really small children and were thus rather tame. Others were about as scary as a small traveling carnival could provide, though no match for the really huge roller coasters and such that were part of the built-in attractions at Elitch’s Gardens farther north. And then there were a few that were rather in-between those two extremes. Those were the ones my mom wanted to ride on. She explained that she had loved the roller coasters at Elitch’s Gardens when she was younger, but wasn’t quite up to those any more. She wanted something ‘tamer,’ but not the kiddie rides.

One was a rather bland up and down ride suggestive of a roller coaster but much tamer. It was called the Caterpillar, and it did resemble that insect form as it wiggled around and up and down in its oval circuit of a rather limited track. At some point during the ride a cloth covering in greenish yellow came up and over the track and the small seats that people were riding in became invisible under the canopy. There were some dutiful screams as this happened, but on the whole the experience promised to be pretty mild.

Except that just then a passing family said something about the idea that while the cloth was covering the riders, perhaps everything turned upside down, and the riders were hanging head down from their seats, until just before the cover went back into wherever it had come from.

Suddenly I was terrified. I couldn’t imagine anything more frightening than being in some contraption in an inverted position, especially when I wouldn’t be able to see what was going on. I demanded that we leave, immediately. My mom said she wasn’t leaving until she had ridden on two or three of the rides. I said I wouldn’t go on any rides and that I couldn’t stand to watch. My dad suggested I might want to wait in the car while the rest of them did what they had come for.

So for the next hour or two (it felt like at least five), I sat alone in our dark car, in a dark parking lot, but within sound of all the screaming, which now seemed sinister to me in the extreme. My dad had locked the car doors with his key, after warning me not to touch the locks for anyone or anything. He promised me that I would be all right.

And I was. The terrors of being alone in a semi-familiar environment were much less threatening than the terrors of being exposed to the sights and sounds of the devilish entertainment being provided by the carnival. I could still hear the sounds, but at least I didn’t have to watch the sights.

(By the way, that’s not a picture of me. And neither is the one at the beginning of the post. They’re both just stock photos, of anonymous kids. But between the two of them, they give a pretty good notion of how I felt..)

When the rest of my family returned, a long time later, I was relieved, and more so when we had arrived back at the house, and I could seek the comfort of my bedroom and bed.

About four months after the carnival I had my next chance to be alone. We had driven to Washington State to be present at my Aunt Reba’s college graduation. That close to the ocean, it seemed silly not to go on and visit a beach. My dad chose Cannon Beach in Oregon, mostly west and very slightly north of Portland.

I had never seen the ocean before, but I had heard the stories. I had been particularly struck by stories of people getting stranded by rising tides. I had no idea how slowly or quickly a tide could move in or out. I had also not heard about breakers. So I took once glimpse at those immense and thunderous waves (Cannon Beach is called that for a very good reason) and panicked. I was sure my mom was going to get stranded by rising tide. I wasn’t worried about myself or any others in our party. Just my mom. I was convinced that I was about to lose her to the ocean.

So I stayed in the car. I refused to go wading, or chasing the waves, as my little sister wanted to do. I refused to even walk along the beach and look for shells or washed-up glass floats, which were abundant at that time. I just stayed in the car, in the parking lot, staring out toward the disaster I was sure was going to happen.

It didn’t, of course. But as we drove away from the beach, all attempts to get me to see the error of my ways failed. It had been a miracle, an act of God, that I hadn’t lost my mother. I was sure of that.

The next occasion for being alone came just a few months later. We had now moved to Greeley, where my dad had just landed a new job. But he had suddenly developed a severe case of tonsillitis, even though he had supposedly had his tonsils removed several years before, prior to my birth. They had regrown and now were horribly infected, probably with strep. He was admitted to the Boulder San, as we called it. (Its real name was the Boulder Sanitarium and Hospital. It was the closest Adventist hospital to Greeley, and he would have no other sort.) The only solution was to have the infected tonsils out, ‘again.’

My younger sister was staying in Denver with Aunt Eda and Grandma Schultz for the duration of the crisis, but I was staying home in Greeley with my mom. Except that she wanted to visit my dad in the hospital, and I was too young to be allowed to visit his room there. (They had a minimum visitor age of twelve, and I was only seven.)

So I waited alone in the car, standing between the rear seat and the back of the front seat and staring out at the usually-beautiful grounds of the San. Except that they seemed only marginally beautiful to me under the circumstances. She was gone for hours. It was a gray day, with no direct sunlight, so there was no danger of becoming overheated, but I was not happy at being abandoned, whether she had a choice in the matter or not.

Of course she could have driven me to Denver, to be with her sister and mother, and with my own sister, but that would have been a forty-five minute drive each way, and she felt the need to be with my dad. (I didn’t know it at the time, but he had almost died during the surgery.)

So here I was in the car again, the same car, but at least it was daylight. I had not been told in words that the time was critical, but I could certainly tell from my mom’s behavior that she was worried. (She was not a good ‘poker player.’)

When the crux of the crisis was past, and she had been assured by the doctors that my dad would not only live, but recover completely, she came back to the car, and we drove back to Greeley. Not a word was said about my stay in the car, and she never asked how I felt. But it was clear that there had been no other realistic way of handling the situation, so I never held it against her..

Occasion number four arrived about a year after the Boulder experience. My dad’s youngest sister, Alta, was a boarding senior at Campion Academy, about a thirty minute drive from our house in Greeley. One night she called him from the dormitory and a few minutes later he said he was going to see her. She was in some sort of emotional state that demanded his presence. (I found out later that her steady boyfriend, Richard, whom she would later marry and have a son with, had just attempted to break up with her, and she was in near hysterics over it. To be more precise, I’m pretty sure she had just found out he was homosexual [which he was] and wasn’t actually attracted to her, but under the circumstances the only way she knew to present that fact was to say that he was trying to break up with her.)

Aunt Alta was only eight years older than I was and was by far my favorite relative, so I begged to go along for the ride, even though it was late at night and past my bedtime. I was warned that I wouldn’t get to see her. Didn’t matter. I wanted to go.

After a rather hurried discussion between my mom and dad, with me interrupting constantly to plead my case, I was allowed to go with my dad. He warned me that I might have to stay alone in the car for a few minutes. That was fine with me. I was getting used to it!

The few minutes turned into a couple of hours.

He told me later that, when he arrived at her dormitory, she was so distraught that it took ten minutes for him to even assure her that he was there. And once she had registered his presence it had taken another twenty minutes or so to get her to stop crying long enough to explain what she was so upset about.

It was as she had told him on the phone. Richard had announced that he was breaking up with her. That he ‘didn’t love her anymore.’ She couldn’t live without him and didn’t know what to do.

My dad gradually got her to calm down and see the reality of the situation. She could live without Richard. She might not like it. She might be in despair about it. But she would live. Together, my dad and his little sister formulated a plan of attack. The next day she would ‘fight back.’ She would convince Richard that he couldn’t live without her. (I am guessing that the ‘sinfulness’ of Richard’s ‘affliction’ came into play here. She could help him cope with his ‘wrong’ feelings and cover up his inclinations, so that he could continue to be a ‘helpful member of society.’ I can hear the self-righteous verbiage being worked out now! The wording would be very God-heavy, with lots of talk about ‘sin,’ but the unstated implication would be that she could help Richard ‘pass’ for straight. Which she did, for several years.)

When my dad finally came back to the car, I had almost fallen asleep, but not quite. We drove home in silence. The next day I was filled in on the part of the drama that I was allowed to know about. (And we never talked about the other part, then or later. Though years later when the marriage broke up, my dad had a very knowing smirk on his face, as though he had known all along. Which I’m sure he did.)

The pair were reconciled. Two years later they got married, and two years after that they had a son, their only child. He grew up to be gay himself.

There’s a moral to the story in there somewhere, though I’m far from certain exactly what it is, or how to put it into words.

What I do know is that seemingly half of my life so far had been spent alone in our car. It got better after that, and there were fewer occasions to leave me alone. But I never forgot what it was like to be both somehow self-reliant and self-doubtful, on the inside, looking out.

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