April 6, 2005

• Snapshots from a past life, Part I

  
  

  (Not sure why, but today I felt an odd need to “tell my story.” Or at least to BEGIN to do so– because, as is the case with most stories, it is a lengthy and complicated one. Maybe I am just trying to remember.)

  
  

  I don’t really remember a whole lot of my childhood. I’ve been sitting here, trying to come up with an “earliest memory,” but it is vague. I have a synesthetic memory of the texture of the tile on our terrace, and how it felt against my knees, when I crawled. I have a “scent memory” of sunwarmed strawberries in my parents’ kitchen garden. I have an aural memory of the sound of the breeze in the cypresses around where I had my secret hiding place in the garden. Yet my memories of “actions” and “events” is vague and patchy.

  
  

  I was born in Denmark– hence the name “DenmarkGuy,” which has followed me around the web for 12 years. The name has no romantic history– it was simply the first thing that came into my head when I opened my AOL account, sometime in 1992.

  
  

  My parents were “older.” By the standards of 1960, my mom being 39 and my dad being 42 was practically unheard of. My mother– already negotiating the fringes of depression at having understood that “marrying for money and status” wasn’t all it was cracked up to be– wanted to have a child before it became “too late,” and issued an ultimatum to my father: “Either we have a child, or I am buying a black poodle for companionship!” My father, who disliked dogs even more than children, eventually caved in… allowing Yours Truly a path into this physical existence.

  
  

  I was born into an old, old-fashioned Danish merchant family. My father was the youngest of five siblings by 14 years, and had largely been raised by his three older sisters, as well as an assortment of housekeepers and nannys. Judging by the photos I’ve seen, my paternal grandparents were quite wealthy– with a large house in the city, and an estate on the coast. My mother grew up dirt-poor, the daughter of a low-ranking civil servant. With the words “You’ll never amount to anything!” ringing in her ears, she set off for New York in the 1940′s, determined to prove her mother wrong. After a career as a runway model and an interpreter for the UN, she met my father (in New York) and “showed” her mother by “marrying well.” I got very close to never being Danish, since they were married in New York– but my father’s mother insisted that the couple return to Denmark, especially if grandchildren were to happen.

  
  

  Some of my clearest memories of childhood involve airports, living out of a suitcase and the whine of jet engines. I am not sure where we’re going, here, but the photo is taken somewhere in Germany, circa 1965. Because I had no other frame of reference, I had no idea how strange my life actually was. I was not even a year old when we first left Denmark, bound for the Balearic Islands where my father had business helping a brewery set up bottling equipment. That’s what he did. He was part owner of a bottle cap factory, but he was also an inventor. The factory supplied almost half the bottle caps used in Denmark, as well as exporting to dozens of countries around the world. I think my dad mostly “put up with” the manufacturing aspects because he could use his invention skills as an excuse to travel the world; as a way to fill his fantasies of just being a globetrotting man-of-the-world from the “non-working class.” The net result was that we moved constantly. Well, not exactly. We had a house in Denmark, then we’d “mothball” it and go somewhere for four months. Then come “home,” for maybe three months. Then off to somewhere else, for 10 weeks. Then home for six months. Then five months somewhere else. Back and forth, over and over, and over.

  
  

  Somewhere, I have photographs of all these places. I can look at the photos, but I don’t really remember the places. Mostly I remember smells. The stale musty air of the attic of our house in France. Mildew in London. Diesel in hanging in cold air, somewhere in the Ruhr district of Germany. The smell of snowmelt on dark wood, in Switzerland. I remember having “collections” in my mind, from when we’d drive from one country to another. I would “collect” the shapes of the different high-voltage cabling towers. I would “collect” the color and texture of highway surfaces in different countries.

  
  

  It all seems so faint, so far away. All the different places slide by, like an inner movie of mis-matched stills. When I try to make one “solid” they all just slide together. It was a strange period of chaos and emptiness. As frenetic as the constant moving seemed, it also seemed to be staggeringly uneventful. Each place was different– yet it was also just the same. At the time, I had no idea that it was slighty “weird” that there were never any other kids around. Before age six, almost the only other children I actually interacted with were my dad’s siblings’ GRANDchildren. Because of my parents’ age, their peers generally had kids who were teenagers or adult. Because of my dad’s work (when we were overseas) the people who came to our various houses were generally his business associates.

  
  

  I learned to read, at a very young age.

  
  

  I learned to entertain myself, at a very young age.

  
  

  I learned to “interact as an adult,” at a very young age.

  
  

  On some odd level, the Universe had made a wise choice to bestow my parents with a deeply introverted child. On some odd level, the Universe had made a wise choice to place a profoundly sensitive and easily overwhelmed child into an enviroment that almost completely lacked outside stimulation.

  
  

  Odd, how things work out.

  
  

  My mom started homeschooling me when I was about four, and we were living in France (photo taken from our house about 1964– musta been a pretty nice place). I don’t really think she had a whole lot else to do. My father only socialized out of duty, and under duress– unless for the purpose of “being seen” in the “right” places. It was a weird thing, now that I think about it. Some part of him wanted to “be recognized” wherever he went, yet he wanted nothing to do with the people who recognized him.

  
  

  I don’t really remember my parents “together” as a parental unit. I remember my mom, and I remember my dad. I don’t remember “them.” Maybe that was symptomatic of their eventual divorce. I grew up without TV– and I remember being puzzled by watching TV at friends’ houses when I was 9-10. It was the first time I was exposed to the idea that married people share a bedroom, let alone sleep in the same bed. At home, my dad slept in his room at one end of the house, my mom in her bedroom, near mine, at the opposite end of the house. Actually, as I look at the architectural schematics of my childhood home, the layout suggests that my room was originally designed as live-in maid’s quarters– it was off in a corner, behind the kitchen and laundry room. On some level, it makes sense, since there were no kids in the works when the house was designed.

  
  

  I don’t remember feeling “at peace” during those early years– but I don’t really remember “unrest,” either. I do remember my father’s vicious temper; his tendency to explode into lightning-fast rages at the smallest thing not unfolding as he wished. My early memories of my mother was that she was either very attentive– or asleep. I was well into my teens before I realized that her tendency to take many “naps” (which was not a topic that was ever “discussed”) and fall asleep during dinner parties was a a result of mixing prescription drugs and alcohol. I was into my 30′s before a therapist explained that my mother’s need for a child was largely to do with her trying to find the emotional intimacy my father couldn’t (or wouldn’t) provide.

  
  

  Come to think of it, I do recall moments of peace; moments where the world seemed more… more…. right, in some way. I would periodically go to stay with my dad’s youngest sister, my aunt, a woman of 60-something, at the time. In many ways, she was the “odd exception” in a family stubbornly trapped in a past that hadn’t existed in 50 years. I am sure she was an empath, as well as someone with a solid grip on the practicalities of day-to-day life. She raised me, in part, and was probably the one most responsible for getting me to adulthood with at least a few ideas about the practicalities of “real life.” She taught me about nature. She was interested in Astrology. She taught me how to grow things, and how to thin a thicket so as to turn it into healthy forest. She taught me some version of psychology, and why people think the ways they do. When I was no more than six or seven, she first introduced me to the idea of “just sitting and being still.” Basically, meditation, by a different name.

  
  

  (This feels like about “enough” for today– like the itch to tell the story has momentarily  abated. I am not sure when I will continue this, but I doubt it will be with the next update. More likely, when the mood strikes me, again.)

  
  

   

  • 7:59 pm
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