"No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once." (Oswald J. Smith)
As our family progresses toward service with Pioneer Bible Translators, I’ve been asked many questions. I hope to be able to answer these in different formats. Some questions I’ve answered in personal conversation, some I hope to answer in sermon form, and for other questions, I will write answers. In this space, I’d like to answer the question "Why?" People want to know why I would move to working with a mission organization that focuses on the unreached parts of the world when I’m part of such a great congregation.
There are over 340 million people in the world who have no access at all to the written Word of God. They haven’t rejected the Scripture, it doesn’t even exist in their language. This number represents more than the entire population of the United States (311 million). Of the over 2,100 different language groups these people are part of, 900 of them have no church presence at all. If we truly believe Jesus is the only means of salvation for the world, and that God has commissioned the Church to share the good news with them, we have to be willing to make sacrifices to see it happen.
The task of taking the gospel to the Bible-less and Church-less people of the world will require people willing to go to the most remote places on the planet. For them to thrive spiritually and make disciples when they arrive, they must have people willing to support them financially and spiritually. They are like the branches of a tree where the fruit is produced. But branches cannot survive unless they are attached to a trunk that is supported by a network of roots. God has called our family to serve in the role of being the trunk of the tree. Those who support us will be the roots who will hold us up so we can train and disciple those whom God is sending to the ends of the earth.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Twenty Three
I graduated from college on May 16th, 1987. The following Saturday seemed to make the best sense for the wedding, so we wed on May 23rd. I had no idea at the time what the significance of that date was in my family history. My biological mother told me that she met my father on May 23rd, 1965. After I was adopted, my adoptive family fell apart and eventually we met again. She brought me back home to live with her on May 23rd, 1980.
Long before I knew who Michael Jordan was, I had been playing football in a Pee Wee League. The number of the uniform I was assigned? 23.
When Ann & I got married, we’d planned to go a long time before having children. We weren’t ready for the responsibilities of parenting. Apparently God has a sense of humor. When I returned from a youth conference with the students in my youth group, we had one of those "guess what Honey?" conversations. Our first child was born on March 4th, 1990. At the time Ann & I were both 23 years old.
Last year during one of our church worship services, I felt convicted by the Lord to devote myself to being a better husband. In a private moment, I made a personal commitment to the Lord to be more devoted to my wife. As I took communion, I noticed for the first time that there are little numbers written on the bottom of the plastic communion cups we use. The number 23 was written on the bottom of mine. I kept the cup.
Ann & I have now been married for 23 years, and we feel strongly called by the Lord to serve as missionaries with Pioneer Bible Translators. We told our elders about our decision in December, and they asked that we be ready to announce our resignation in mid-January. I was ready to make the announcement on January 16th, but they ask that I wait a week. So I made this pivotal announcement in our lives the next Sunday – January 23rd.
Once you notice a pattern, you tend to look for things that reinforce it. It is hard to regard all this as pure coincidence, and yet one cannot also help but wonder what if anything it may mean.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Like a Stone Wall
When I moved in with Uncle Ranny, Aunt Kathy and Mary, I began a season of stability in my life I hadn't experienced since elementary school. I completed my high school career at Stonewall Jackson High School. My weeks were punctuated by midweek youth group experiences that served as an oasis of relief between Sundays. Although I knew little of what it meant to be a Christian, I found a sense of peace and joy being in the presence of God and His people. That isn't to say there weren't times I felt totally out of place. People would often refer to "familiar" bible stories in conversation and I would have no idea what they were talking about. I had no idea what David had to do with Goliath, why Jonah was in a fish, or why God was interested in talking donkeys. But I played along and learned as I went.
I'd love to say I was Mr. Popularity in my new school environment. But as a late-blooming 14 year old in the 10th grade, that would be far from the truth. I didn't have any great attractiveness or talents that drew others to me, and I was not very socially adept. My emotional maturity had stalled somewhere around eleven or twelve years old, and I am grateful that some people were kind to me despite my selfishness. I don't remember much about finishing my sophomore year. But that summer was another summer that brought significant life change. That was the summer when I experienced one of the greatest joys on earth for the first time -- Christian camp.
Tri-State Christian Camp sits nestled in the northwestern corner of Virginia. God used this setting to call me from merely accepting Christ as Savior to accepting him as Lord. David Lucas & the Watchman quartet were there for the week. God spoke a message through David in which he explained that God has called us to be Salt, Servants, and Sacrifice. Something about the message at vespers that Wednesday night left me thunderstruck. I spent the evening talking with God while the other students were continuing with evening activities. That night at campfire when the invitation was offered, I offered myself to serve the Lord full-time in ministry. One other person came forward that night, but I don't recall their decision. I'm grateful I didn't wait until the following night when 44 students responded. Had I responded then, I would question whether my judgement was influenced by the decisions of others.
Now that I'd made this life-changing decision, I needed to figure out what it meant. When I returned home, I remember being depressed and lonely. I had gone from being around dozens of Christian peers to being by myself at home on Lake Jackson. I spent most of the rest of the summer fishing, and grew to be fairly decent at it, though I was never quite as good as my best friend Scott or Uncle Ranny, who had become Dad. Scott and Mark and I were the three amigos. We were about the same age, part of the same youth group, and we all enjoyed fishing and one another's company. My friendship with Scott endures from a distance to today, but we were grieved to learn of Mark's suicide a number of years ago.
The longer I lived with Uncle Ranny and Aunt Kathy, the more clear it was to me that they were the parents I'd never had two of before. I was never sure before what it would feel like to have a Mom & Dad, and I finally felt I was getting to experience it. They got legal custody of me, and began pursuing adoption. It may seem odd to think of adopting a junior in High School, but it meant a lot to me that they actually wanted to be my parents, since it seemed so many others had bailed on the task. My biological mother was understandably reluctant to give me away a second time, so the adoption process took a long time. In fact, it wasn't until I graduated from high school that I found out I was legally adopted for a second time. In all, I was adopted three times: the first time by the Stetten family, the second time by Christ, and now the third time by the Isenberg's. One thing that made this seem particularly fitting was knowing that when I was born, they had offered to take me in then. But at the time both Ranny and Kathy were young (21 & 23), struggling, and they already had two kids. My life had come full circle and I was back home where I might have started.
My junior year memories include pleasant memories of riding with Mary each day to school. We would stop at 7-11 to pick up snacks or play Ms. Pac Man. Although I think it was difficult for her to suddenly have a younger brother, for the most part she handled it well. We are nine months apart in age, but were in the same grade together. Thankfully, our classes were mostly different and our social circles overlapped very little. This likely helped her life feel a bit less cramped by my presence. As time went on, the relationship between Mom and Dad became more tense. There was trouble in my new paradise. It still seemed more stable that most of my life experiences, but it shook my sense of stability
The summer between junior & senior year I returned to camp where Jay Banks led the group Son's Up. They produced music that seemed much more fun and alive than the typical hymns I was accustomed to at Antioch Church of Christ where I attended on a weekly basis. Since they were based out of Roanoke Bible College, they played a huge role in my decision to go to college there the following fall. I wanted to get an education from a place where they were able to combine knowing more about Jesus with humor, music, and relevance. I never dreamed at the time that one day I would be part of Son's Up myself.
My senior year I spent very little time in school. I only went for the first four periods, and by noon I was out. I grabbed a quick lunch each day and walked to Manassas Mall where I worked from 12:30 - 9:30 five days a week with an hour long break for dinner. I worked at the Thom McAn shoe store after a short stint with a consumer polling organization called Consumer Pulse. Working 40 hours a week helped me become more responsible and gave me a nice weekly income. But looking back now, I regret that I completely squandered my senior year. I really look back now on that year of my life, and all I remember for the most part is working. The only exception I can think of is the afternoon Kathy and Mary and I walked in the house and realized that we had been robbed. While we stood in the kitchen assessing the damage, we heard the robbers downstairs still in our basement! In shock and horror, we raced out of the house and down the road. But other than that, my senior year is just a blur.
I was 16 years old when I graduated from Stonewall. I'm grateful for Mr. Miller's U.S. history class that helped me fall in love with history. I'm grateful for Mr. Button, my Christian physics teacher. And I'm thankful for Mrs. Blauvelt, who helped me learn that while you may be able to get by in life without doing your best, that you'll never be satisfied with your own medicrity when you know you could and should have done better. By the time I graduated, I wasn't very solid personally, but at least I had some positive experiences that had helped me grow in that direction.
I'd love to say I was Mr. Popularity in my new school environment. But as a late-blooming 14 year old in the 10th grade, that would be far from the truth. I didn't have any great attractiveness or talents that drew others to me, and I was not very socially adept. My emotional maturity had stalled somewhere around eleven or twelve years old, and I am grateful that some people were kind to me despite my selfishness. I don't remember much about finishing my sophomore year. But that summer was another summer that brought significant life change. That was the summer when I experienced one of the greatest joys on earth for the first time -- Christian camp.
Tri-State Christian Camp sits nestled in the northwestern corner of Virginia. God used this setting to call me from merely accepting Christ as Savior to accepting him as Lord. David Lucas & the Watchman quartet were there for the week. God spoke a message through David in which he explained that God has called us to be Salt, Servants, and Sacrifice. Something about the message at vespers that Wednesday night left me thunderstruck. I spent the evening talking with God while the other students were continuing with evening activities. That night at campfire when the invitation was offered, I offered myself to serve the Lord full-time in ministry. One other person came forward that night, but I don't recall their decision. I'm grateful I didn't wait until the following night when 44 students responded. Had I responded then, I would question whether my judgement was influenced by the decisions of others.
Now that I'd made this life-changing decision, I needed to figure out what it meant. When I returned home, I remember being depressed and lonely. I had gone from being around dozens of Christian peers to being by myself at home on Lake Jackson. I spent most of the rest of the summer fishing, and grew to be fairly decent at it, though I was never quite as good as my best friend Scott or Uncle Ranny, who had become Dad. Scott and Mark and I were the three amigos. We were about the same age, part of the same youth group, and we all enjoyed fishing and one another's company. My friendship with Scott endures from a distance to today, but we were grieved to learn of Mark's suicide a number of years ago.
The longer I lived with Uncle Ranny and Aunt Kathy, the more clear it was to me that they were the parents I'd never had two of before. I was never sure before what it would feel like to have a Mom & Dad, and I finally felt I was getting to experience it. They got legal custody of me, and began pursuing adoption. It may seem odd to think of adopting a junior in High School, but it meant a lot to me that they actually wanted to be my parents, since it seemed so many others had bailed on the task. My biological mother was understandably reluctant to give me away a second time, so the adoption process took a long time. In fact, it wasn't until I graduated from high school that I found out I was legally adopted for a second time. In all, I was adopted three times: the first time by the Stetten family, the second time by Christ, and now the third time by the Isenberg's. One thing that made this seem particularly fitting was knowing that when I was born, they had offered to take me in then. But at the time both Ranny and Kathy were young (21 & 23), struggling, and they already had two kids. My life had come full circle and I was back home where I might have started.
My junior year memories include pleasant memories of riding with Mary each day to school. We would stop at 7-11 to pick up snacks or play Ms. Pac Man. Although I think it was difficult for her to suddenly have a younger brother, for the most part she handled it well. We are nine months apart in age, but were in the same grade together. Thankfully, our classes were mostly different and our social circles overlapped very little. This likely helped her life feel a bit less cramped by my presence. As time went on, the relationship between Mom and Dad became more tense. There was trouble in my new paradise. It still seemed more stable that most of my life experiences, but it shook my sense of stability
The summer between junior & senior year I returned to camp where Jay Banks led the group Son's Up. They produced music that seemed much more fun and alive than the typical hymns I was accustomed to at Antioch Church of Christ where I attended on a weekly basis. Since they were based out of Roanoke Bible College, they played a huge role in my decision to go to college there the following fall. I wanted to get an education from a place where they were able to combine knowing more about Jesus with humor, music, and relevance. I never dreamed at the time that one day I would be part of Son's Up myself.
My senior year I spent very little time in school. I only went for the first four periods, and by noon I was out. I grabbed a quick lunch each day and walked to Manassas Mall where I worked from 12:30 - 9:30 five days a week with an hour long break for dinner. I worked at the Thom McAn shoe store after a short stint with a consumer polling organization called Consumer Pulse. Working 40 hours a week helped me become more responsible and gave me a nice weekly income. But looking back now, I regret that I completely squandered my senior year. I really look back now on that year of my life, and all I remember for the most part is working. The only exception I can think of is the afternoon Kathy and Mary and I walked in the house and realized that we had been robbed. While we stood in the kitchen assessing the damage, we heard the robbers downstairs still in our basement! In shock and horror, we raced out of the house and down the road. But other than that, my senior year is just a blur.
I was 16 years old when I graduated from Stonewall. I'm grateful for Mr. Miller's U.S. history class that helped me fall in love with history. I'm grateful for Mr. Button, my Christian physics teacher. And I'm thankful for Mrs. Blauvelt, who helped me learn that while you may be able to get by in life without doing your best, that you'll never be satisfied with your own medicrity when you know you could and should have done better. By the time I graduated, I wasn't very solid personally, but at least I had some positive experiences that had helped me grow in that direction.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
What About the Change?
A few days later, I was heading back east to the relative familiarity of the Carlin Springs area of Arlington, VA. My biological mother had returned with Panayiotis and Carrie from Greece. I wish I could say my life became suddenly and dramatically different because of my conversion experience. Perhaps there was a difference in my conduct that was obvious to others. I immediately quit smoking -- anything. I tried to be what I thought was "nice," but it was just as likely I had become judgmental. That's the thing about believing in God and heaven. If you're really serious about it, you've just implicitly condemned the majority of the human race. Of course you realize it isn't actually you doing the condemning, but deep down you have to believe every human being on earth is going to spend forever in either heaven or hell. Life has become an "all or nothing" proposition. If life was a poker game, becoming a Christian is like going "all in."
I traded in my smoking habit for chewing tobacco. This was a habit I picked up while visiting with my Uncle Ranny in Manassas. He was my biological father's brother, and since he only lived 45 minutes west down I-66, I visited him a couple times before school started. He chewed Red Man, fished, and lived in a house on a lake. He was also married and had two kids. He was the sort of father figure I thought made a good role model. Besides, chewing seemed a less obnoxious way to satisfy my oral fixation. My first time chewing was while Uncle Ranny and I were fishing on Lake Jackson. Having heard stories, I feared getting nauseous. But I actually found I enjoyed it. Dad used to say that spitting on the lure would take the human smell off the lure and help you catch fish. Looking back, it was probably nonsense, but we did it anyway.
In the fall, I began school at Hoffman-Boston. The school was designed for gifted students and allowed them much greater freedom than the typical school environment. We only went to classes a few days of the week, and had free time when we weren't in class. We referred to our teachers by their first names, and played poker in the cafeteria. The school also had a computer, which quickly became a source of fascination for many students. To grasp the impact of having a computer at the school, you have to remember that it is the fall of 1980. The personal computer barely even existed, and very few schools had computers available for student access. Several of us made it a personal project to begin learning how to program in BASIC.
Life began to assume some sense of normalcy and rhythm. I had a paper route again, this time in the Carlin Springs area, which was very convenient. And I started going to church on a regular basis. It was made clear to me in no uncertain terms that I would have to walk to church. So I began making the weekly trek to the only church I knew of within walking distance -- St. Andrews Episcopal Church. The preacher went by the title "Father," which seemed rather pretentious to me. But he was a very kind man who seemed to take a liking to me quickly. It wasn't long before I became an acolyte, and eventually the head acolyte. Basically, this meant I got to carry one of the flags up the aisle at the beginning of the service, sit up front and mix the Eucharist (communion).
In the Episcopal church, communion is usually referred to as "The Eucharist" and consists of melt-in-your mouth wafers and a mix of water and wine. It didn't take long before I realized that no matter how much communion I prepared, the priest had to consume whatever was left after everyone else drank. I found that if I made it mostly wine and nearly filled the cup with it, that his homily (sermon) was more entertaining and light-hearted.
However, at my core I was (and still am, to some degree) very self-centered and self-motivated. This led to me feeling that my mother was controlling when she wanted to set boundaries for me. The key moment happened one afternoon when she informed me when I got home after school that if I expected to eat dinner at home tonight, I'd better be there by 6:30 (I think that was the time). I went and delivered the newspapers on my route, and when a friend of mine offered for me to have dinner with he and his family, I took him up on it. When I got back home at about 9:00, my mother was quite angry that I was so late. She asked me, "didn't I tell you to be home by 6:30?" I pointed out that no, she hadn't really. She had merely said that if I expected to eat dinner there, that's when I needed to be home. At the time it seemed like a perfectly reasonable interpretation of her words to me.
She told me that if I didn't start behaving, she was going to send me off to live with my Uncle in Manassas.In anger, she sent me to my room. There, I seized the opportunity to call my Uncle Ranny. The idea of living with him seemed like a pretty good deal to me. Especially since 1) there was a church there that was similar to the one where I had been baptized; and 2) there were a couple cute girls in the Youth Group there. Uncle Ranny told me I was always welcome at his home, but that he didn't feel it was his place to get involved in this dispute. But the experience planted an idea in my mind that later took root.
The next time I went to Manassas to visit my Uncle Ranny and Aunt Kathy was Valentine's Day weekend in 1981. I was a sophomore in high school, and it was a three day weekend. Part of the festivities of the weekend included a "Christian Skate Night." Both of the two young ladies I was particularly fond of from the Antioch Church of Christ youth group were present, and I remember having a great time. When Monday rolled around, Virginia and Panayiotis came to pick me up at the house Dad lived at on Lake Jackson near Manassas. Without informing anyone of my intent, I announced that I wanted to stay with them rather than return to Arlington. What followed was an argument that lasted about six hours. At one point my mother tried to physically remove me from the house, but neither Uncle Ranny (who would be happy if I stayed), or Panayiotis (who would have preferred I stayed there also) were willing to help her. So eventually she got back in the car and drove back to Arlington without me.
That day I became part of a new family. I stayed in the bedroom that used to belong to my older cousin Theresa. She had recently gotten married and moved out. My other cousin Mary had the adjacent bedroom. As quickly as possible, I was transferred to Stonewall Jackson High School, where Mary attended. We were in the same grade, and so orientation to the routine was fairly easy. Behind the scenes, Uncle Ranny and Aunt Kathy and Theresa and Mary began to discuss with one another whether I would be allowed to stay and become a permanent member of the family. All I knew was that for the first time since I was twelve years old, I felt like I was home.
I traded in my smoking habit for chewing tobacco. This was a habit I picked up while visiting with my Uncle Ranny in Manassas. He was my biological father's brother, and since he only lived 45 minutes west down I-66, I visited him a couple times before school started. He chewed Red Man, fished, and lived in a house on a lake. He was also married and had two kids. He was the sort of father figure I thought made a good role model. Besides, chewing seemed a less obnoxious way to satisfy my oral fixation. My first time chewing was while Uncle Ranny and I were fishing on Lake Jackson. Having heard stories, I feared getting nauseous. But I actually found I enjoyed it. Dad used to say that spitting on the lure would take the human smell off the lure and help you catch fish. Looking back, it was probably nonsense, but we did it anyway.
In the fall, I began school at Hoffman-Boston. The school was designed for gifted students and allowed them much greater freedom than the typical school environment. We only went to classes a few days of the week, and had free time when we weren't in class. We referred to our teachers by their first names, and played poker in the cafeteria. The school also had a computer, which quickly became a source of fascination for many students. To grasp the impact of having a computer at the school, you have to remember that it is the fall of 1980. The personal computer barely even existed, and very few schools had computers available for student access. Several of us made it a personal project to begin learning how to program in BASIC.
Life began to assume some sense of normalcy and rhythm. I had a paper route again, this time in the Carlin Springs area, which was very convenient. And I started going to church on a regular basis. It was made clear to me in no uncertain terms that I would have to walk to church. So I began making the weekly trek to the only church I knew of within walking distance -- St. Andrews Episcopal Church. The preacher went by the title "Father," which seemed rather pretentious to me. But he was a very kind man who seemed to take a liking to me quickly. It wasn't long before I became an acolyte, and eventually the head acolyte. Basically, this meant I got to carry one of the flags up the aisle at the beginning of the service, sit up front and mix the Eucharist (communion).
In the Episcopal church, communion is usually referred to as "The Eucharist" and consists of melt-in-your mouth wafers and a mix of water and wine. It didn't take long before I realized that no matter how much communion I prepared, the priest had to consume whatever was left after everyone else drank. I found that if I made it mostly wine and nearly filled the cup with it, that his homily (sermon) was more entertaining and light-hearted.
However, at my core I was (and still am, to some degree) very self-centered and self-motivated. This led to me feeling that my mother was controlling when she wanted to set boundaries for me. The key moment happened one afternoon when she informed me when I got home after school that if I expected to eat dinner at home tonight, I'd better be there by 6:30 (I think that was the time). I went and delivered the newspapers on my route, and when a friend of mine offered for me to have dinner with he and his family, I took him up on it. When I got back home at about 9:00, my mother was quite angry that I was so late. She asked me, "didn't I tell you to be home by 6:30?" I pointed out that no, she hadn't really. She had merely said that if I expected to eat dinner there, that's when I needed to be home. At the time it seemed like a perfectly reasonable interpretation of her words to me.
She told me that if I didn't start behaving, she was going to send me off to live with my Uncle in Manassas.In anger, she sent me to my room. There, I seized the opportunity to call my Uncle Ranny. The idea of living with him seemed like a pretty good deal to me. Especially since 1) there was a church there that was similar to the one where I had been baptized; and 2) there were a couple cute girls in the Youth Group there. Uncle Ranny told me I was always welcome at his home, but that he didn't feel it was his place to get involved in this dispute. But the experience planted an idea in my mind that later took root.
The next time I went to Manassas to visit my Uncle Ranny and Aunt Kathy was Valentine's Day weekend in 1981. I was a sophomore in high school, and it was a three day weekend. Part of the festivities of the weekend included a "Christian Skate Night." Both of the two young ladies I was particularly fond of from the Antioch Church of Christ youth group were present, and I remember having a great time. When Monday rolled around, Virginia and Panayiotis came to pick me up at the house Dad lived at on Lake Jackson near Manassas. Without informing anyone of my intent, I announced that I wanted to stay with them rather than return to Arlington. What followed was an argument that lasted about six hours. At one point my mother tried to physically remove me from the house, but neither Uncle Ranny (who would be happy if I stayed), or Panayiotis (who would have preferred I stayed there also) were willing to help her. So eventually she got back in the car and drove back to Arlington without me.
That day I became part of a new family. I stayed in the bedroom that used to belong to my older cousin Theresa. She had recently gotten married and moved out. My other cousin Mary had the adjacent bedroom. As quickly as possible, I was transferred to Stonewall Jackson High School, where Mary attended. We were in the same grade, and so orientation to the routine was fairly easy. Behind the scenes, Uncle Ranny and Aunt Kathy and Theresa and Mary began to discuss with one another whether I would be allowed to stay and become a permanent member of the family. All I knew was that for the first time since I was twelve years old, I felt like I was home.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Hole in the Soul
Although life moved on (in a sense) after Mom died, death didn't sit right with me. It wasn't that I thought she didn't deserve to die or that I couldn't get over the grief. It was death itself that I found so disturbing. What bothered me most was this nagging feeling that something seemed quite different about the death of a person. Intellectually, I believed humans had evolved from less developed creatures. This development went back to energized primordial slime I believed formed the raw material for life to begin. Of course we've all heard this since we were little, but my experience challenged this belief.
Meanwhile, I was heading to Huntington, West Virginia. Like many people who grew up in my area, I had some pretty strong conceptions about how backward the people who live there would be. Yet I was pleasantly surprised to find my previously unknown relatives apparently had all their teeth and were actually rather intelligent. For the month I was there, I lived with my Grandmother Isenberg, who we affectionately referred to as "Mamaw." My Uncle Harry and Aunt Winifred (Winnie) lived up the hill, and Aunt Vida lived next door to them. My cousin Tim lived next door. I was literally surrounded by a family I'd never had before. They taught me to play Canasta, a game we still play at family gatherings to this day.
My Uncle Harry seemed to take a special interest in me. He drove a refrigerated truck to various small and medium sized grocery stores where he sold his goods. I went with him on at least one occasion and got to watch him engage the people he did business with on a regular basis. We spent many evenings over the course of that month sitting on the hillside together talking about God. Since at the time I didn't believe in God, this made for some interesting conversations. I remember asking him questions like, "If Christianity is true, why can you people not get your story straight?" I'd talked to many so-called Christians, and they all seemed to believe different things.
I wish I could remember half of the conversations we had over the course of that month. Eventually I was open to reading some of the words of the Bible with him. He explained to me what he believed the Bible required of someone who wants to be a Christian. Faith, confession, and repentance were mentioned, but it was clear that in Uncle Harry's mind the decisive moment was at baptism. If you wanted to be clean, you had to let God wash your soul. It seemed a pretty simple thing to me, but at the same time something in me resisted the idea. But after a while, I remember thinking he might be right. If I was right and there was no God, then I haven't lost anything. But if he was right and there WAS a God (and I didn't do anything about it), I was in big trouble. I figured I didn't have anything to lose.
July 13th of that year was the last Sunday I was going to be in West Virginia. I'd told my family that I thought I would go ahead and take the plunge. But that morning when I woke up, I felt sick to my stomach. When I told them I was going to just stay home from church, I could tell they were disappointed. But to their credit, they didn't pressure me to go. Nevertheless, at the last moment I got up and threw some clothes on. I told them I would go, but I didn't think I was going to be baptized that day.
Everyone has been in church services that seemed long. But that day I thought the preacher would never stop talking. His name was John and he seemed to drone on forever before the piano mercifully began playing and we started to sing some song out of the hymnal. Just a few more minutes and I would be out of there. Yet at some point during that song, apparently I started walking down the aisle. Halfway down or so, I realized where I was and turned around to look back at my Grandmother smiling at me. I figured at this point it would be worse to go back than to finish the journey, so I walked the rest of the way to the front.
When the preacher started talking to me, the only thing I remember is his breath. I asked if I could talk to my Uncle Harry. Uncle Harry came forward and asked me to repeat some words and I was then escorted to a chilly room on the basement floor of the building. A woman handed me a white garment with lots of strings and hooks and buttons that looked more like a straightjacket to me than anything else. In that moment, I began to think perhaps I was making a big mistake. My stomach began churning and I was nearly overcome by a desire to go running out of this building, away from these religious weirdos. The woman returned a few minutes later and asked from the door, "Do you have it on yet?" I assured her that I did not, and she got someone who could help me.
She then escorted me to a small pool where my Uncle Harry was standing in the water. I descended the stairs and turned. As my stomach continued to protest, I wondered what it would look like if I vomited in the water. Just then, someone pulled open a curtain and I realized I was standing in front of the same people who I was in church with some minutes ago. Why hadn't they gone home? What were they waiting for? Uncle Harry raised his hands and said some words about Jesus and then pushed me under the water. When I came up out of the water, I felt different.
For centuries, people have argued about baptism. Christians have very different salvation experiences. I cannot speak for others, but in my case I experienced the joy of my salvation the moment I was raised from the waters of baptism. My stomach no longer churned, I didn't feel sick any more, and I couldn't stop smiling. I didn't know exactly what had just happened, but I knew I liked it. I'd never experienced anything like that before.
My 14th birthday was three days later, on July 16th. But on July 13th I felt I'd finally found my real family, I'd be adopted by God. The sense of emptiness and longing that had defined my life to that point finally experienced satisfaction. It was as if I'd been hungry my whole life, and for the first time in my life, I'd actually eaten a meal. I would be hungry again, but for I at least knew now that I could be filled.
Meanwhile, I was heading to Huntington, West Virginia. Like many people who grew up in my area, I had some pretty strong conceptions about how backward the people who live there would be. Yet I was pleasantly surprised to find my previously unknown relatives apparently had all their teeth and were actually rather intelligent. For the month I was there, I lived with my Grandmother Isenberg, who we affectionately referred to as "Mamaw." My Uncle Harry and Aunt Winifred (Winnie) lived up the hill, and Aunt Vida lived next door to them. My cousin Tim lived next door. I was literally surrounded by a family I'd never had before. They taught me to play Canasta, a game we still play at family gatherings to this day.
My Uncle Harry seemed to take a special interest in me. He drove a refrigerated truck to various small and medium sized grocery stores where he sold his goods. I went with him on at least one occasion and got to watch him engage the people he did business with on a regular basis. We spent many evenings over the course of that month sitting on the hillside together talking about God. Since at the time I didn't believe in God, this made for some interesting conversations. I remember asking him questions like, "If Christianity is true, why can you people not get your story straight?" I'd talked to many so-called Christians, and they all seemed to believe different things.
I wish I could remember half of the conversations we had over the course of that month. Eventually I was open to reading some of the words of the Bible with him. He explained to me what he believed the Bible required of someone who wants to be a Christian. Faith, confession, and repentance were mentioned, but it was clear that in Uncle Harry's mind the decisive moment was at baptism. If you wanted to be clean, you had to let God wash your soul. It seemed a pretty simple thing to me, but at the same time something in me resisted the idea. But after a while, I remember thinking he might be right. If I was right and there was no God, then I haven't lost anything. But if he was right and there WAS a God (and I didn't do anything about it), I was in big trouble. I figured I didn't have anything to lose.
July 13th of that year was the last Sunday I was going to be in West Virginia. I'd told my family that I thought I would go ahead and take the plunge. But that morning when I woke up, I felt sick to my stomach. When I told them I was going to just stay home from church, I could tell they were disappointed. But to their credit, they didn't pressure me to go. Nevertheless, at the last moment I got up and threw some clothes on. I told them I would go, but I didn't think I was going to be baptized that day.
Everyone has been in church services that seemed long. But that day I thought the preacher would never stop talking. His name was John and he seemed to drone on forever before the piano mercifully began playing and we started to sing some song out of the hymnal. Just a few more minutes and I would be out of there. Yet at some point during that song, apparently I started walking down the aisle. Halfway down or so, I realized where I was and turned around to look back at my Grandmother smiling at me. I figured at this point it would be worse to go back than to finish the journey, so I walked the rest of the way to the front.
When the preacher started talking to me, the only thing I remember is his breath. I asked if I could talk to my Uncle Harry. Uncle Harry came forward and asked me to repeat some words and I was then escorted to a chilly room on the basement floor of the building. A woman handed me a white garment with lots of strings and hooks and buttons that looked more like a straightjacket to me than anything else. In that moment, I began to think perhaps I was making a big mistake. My stomach began churning and I was nearly overcome by a desire to go running out of this building, away from these religious weirdos. The woman returned a few minutes later and asked from the door, "Do you have it on yet?" I assured her that I did not, and she got someone who could help me.
She then escorted me to a small pool where my Uncle Harry was standing in the water. I descended the stairs and turned. As my stomach continued to protest, I wondered what it would look like if I vomited in the water. Just then, someone pulled open a curtain and I realized I was standing in front of the same people who I was in church with some minutes ago. Why hadn't they gone home? What were they waiting for? Uncle Harry raised his hands and said some words about Jesus and then pushed me under the water. When I came up out of the water, I felt different.
For centuries, people have argued about baptism. Christians have very different salvation experiences. I cannot speak for others, but in my case I experienced the joy of my salvation the moment I was raised from the waters of baptism. My stomach no longer churned, I didn't feel sick any more, and I couldn't stop smiling. I didn't know exactly what had just happened, but I knew I liked it. I'd never experienced anything like that before.
My 14th birthday was three days later, on July 16th. But on July 13th I felt I'd finally found my real family, I'd be adopted by God. The sense of emptiness and longing that had defined my life to that point finally experienced satisfaction. It was as if I'd been hungry my whole life, and for the first time in my life, I'd actually eaten a meal. I would be hungry again, but for I at least knew now that I could be filled.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Dying for Change
As I watched the cab vanish, I went to my Grandmother Stetten's house (Ken's Mom). I remember little about the next few hours. There were two calls from the hospital. The first related to us that the situation was serious and I should get to the hospital as soon as possible. After that call, we phoned Ken to have him pick me up. The second was just as Ken arrived. My Mom had died.
Few things in life are more tragic than losing the person who you believe loves you most. Although my relationship with my mother was not an intimate one, it was still the best I had. There were nights I had prayed to a God I didn't believe in that she would die. I thought my life would be so much better without her telling me what to do. But the moment my wish had been granted, I realized an emptiness I'd never known before. The memorial service was surreal. I sang "I Get by With a Little Help from my Friends" by the Beatles. Ironically, I'm not sure I had any real friends at the time.
Custody went to Ken, who had since remarried a young woman named Mary and had a young son named Jason. To say the least, I was an enormous inconvenience. My bedroom was in an addition attached to the living room. I lived halfway between Purcellville and Lovettsville, VA in a place aptly called Wheatland. During the blur of time that I lived there, I finished the 8th grade at Blue Ridge Middle School. That winter was the largest snowstorm I had ever seen. It was on February 19th & 20th and dropped nearly two feet of snow where I lived. I saved the front page of The Washington Post from that storm for many years. That is the only clear memory I have from that school year. We were out for a week.
That spring our "family" traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico where my Grandmother Stetten had moved. We traveled by car, and fittingly, I was stuck in the back of a Volvo station wagon for the entire cross-country trip. I remember very clearly feeling as though I was not a part of this family, and there was no changing that. So it was really no big surprise to me that when the family announced they were going to be moving to New Mexico before the end of the school year, I wasn't going to be going with them. I would stay behind so I could "finish out the school year." Yeah.
When they left, I moved in with a family who lived on a farm fairly near my school. Suddenly my routine involved getting up at about 5:30 in the morning to feed chickens and horses. There was something that seemed wholesome about this family, which is probably why I fit in like a square peg in a round hole. I did think the daughter who was about my age was very attractive. Which is probably why I didn't end up living there very long. The two clearest memories I have during my time living there was listening to the Beatles over and over again, and having my first experience with Tarot cards and a Ouija board. I remember being told my life card was "Death." Not the most encouraging sign, to be sure.
At some point during this period of time, Ken Stetten called the Pierce Warwick Adoption Agency. This was the agency that processed my adoption. He apparently asked if there was any way to give me back, or to somehow alleviate his responsibility to me. The woman who took the call was named Ginger Swisher. About seven years before this she had received another all about me from my biological mother. She had asked that a note be put in my file indicating she would like me to be able to find her. She also asked that a name be put on my record -- James Michael. This was my father's name, and the name of the man she intended to marry. Although closed adoptions like mine are supposed to be kept strictly confidential, Ginger gave Ken contact information for my biological mother. I, of course, knew nothing about any of this at the time.
Meanwhile, that fall I started high school at Loudon Valley High. I stayed there for a couple months, and then was moved -- but not to New Mexico. I ended up moving to Leesburg with a single mother and her two kids. She had a boy and a girl. I don't remember anything about the boy, but I remember the girl was nearly as old as I was and still regularly wet the bed. The woman who lived there had different men come home with her. I remember living with headphones on, filling my head with Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall album. I transferred to Loudon County High School, the archrival of the school I had just attended. But I hardly cared, since I never stayed in the same place long enough to develop any loyalties -- to schools or people. It was my fifth school in two years, and the big change was still to come.
If you've ever experienced a day when you just knew something weird was going to happen, you know the feeling I had the first day of spring in 1980. I was 13 years old in the 9th grade, and all day long I felt like I was living in The Twilight Zone. So I really wasn't all that terribly surprised when I walked into the place where I lived and saw my Grandmother Stetten sitting there with a young dark haired woman. My grandmother Stetten had moved back to Virginia at some point, but it was very unusual for her to be in Leesburg. I asked her, "Grandma, how did you get here?" She answered, "This lovely young lady brought me here." We exchanged small talk for a few moments, and then my grandmother got up and left the room. At that point I turned to the lady and asked, "So, who are you lovely young lady?" She responded, "Are you ready for this?" Having no idea what I was agreeing to, I said, "Sure!"
"I'm your mother."
I stared at her, my mind whirling to try to figure out if she was telling the truth. She spoke again, and simply said, "Well?" I responded, "I'm in shock." When she said, "I'm in shock too," it only made sense to say, "Let's be in shock together!"
We stood and looked at one another, and after offering her a handshake, we instead exchanged a somewhat awkward embrace. Was I supposed to be hugging this woman that I had never met before ten minutes ago? Should I love her since she may well be my biological mother? Could I call her "Mom" when the woman I'd known as Mom for my childhood had died? I wish I could say I recall the rest of this encounter with the same clarity I have for that brief part of exchange. But we did talk for a while longer, and eventually they left.
Over the next couple months, plans were made for me to finish school early and move in with Virginia, my bio-mom, my birth mother. I didn't know what that was going to be like, but I figured anything had to be an upgrade from my current living situation. In May, I moved in with her. I discovered she was married to a Greek man named Panayiotis Gouskos. She had previously been married to another man (Michael Bugg), but never married my father. I found out then that my father Jimmy Isenberg died when I was five years old of a drug overdose. He had been addicted to heroin, but actually overdosed on methadone, a drug they gave him to help him break his heroin addiction.
I lived in a side room attached to the living room. We lived in the basement of a house that belonged to Virginia's father. She also had a baby daughter, my half-sister Carrie. When I moved in, I felt more loved and accepted here than I had for a long time. But there were still many tensions, and the longer I was there, the more obvious they were. Still, I was grateful for the provision, and for getting to know the family I would have had all along, had things gone differently. When they left to go to Greece for a month during the summer, I got that familiar feeling when they chose to leave me behind. But it gave me the opportunity to meet my father's family, and to have a far more life-changing experience in (of all places), Huntington, West Virginia.
Few things in life are more tragic than losing the person who you believe loves you most. Although my relationship with my mother was not an intimate one, it was still the best I had. There were nights I had prayed to a God I didn't believe in that she would die. I thought my life would be so much better without her telling me what to do. But the moment my wish had been granted, I realized an emptiness I'd never known before. The memorial service was surreal. I sang "I Get by With a Little Help from my Friends" by the Beatles. Ironically, I'm not sure I had any real friends at the time.
Custody went to Ken, who had since remarried a young woman named Mary and had a young son named Jason. To say the least, I was an enormous inconvenience. My bedroom was in an addition attached to the living room. I lived halfway between Purcellville and Lovettsville, VA in a place aptly called Wheatland. During the blur of time that I lived there, I finished the 8th grade at Blue Ridge Middle School. That winter was the largest snowstorm I had ever seen. It was on February 19th & 20th and dropped nearly two feet of snow where I lived. I saved the front page of The Washington Post from that storm for many years. That is the only clear memory I have from that school year. We were out for a week.
That spring our "family" traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico where my Grandmother Stetten had moved. We traveled by car, and fittingly, I was stuck in the back of a Volvo station wagon for the entire cross-country trip. I remember very clearly feeling as though I was not a part of this family, and there was no changing that. So it was really no big surprise to me that when the family announced they were going to be moving to New Mexico before the end of the school year, I wasn't going to be going with them. I would stay behind so I could "finish out the school year." Yeah.
When they left, I moved in with a family who lived on a farm fairly near my school. Suddenly my routine involved getting up at about 5:30 in the morning to feed chickens and horses. There was something that seemed wholesome about this family, which is probably why I fit in like a square peg in a round hole. I did think the daughter who was about my age was very attractive. Which is probably why I didn't end up living there very long. The two clearest memories I have during my time living there was listening to the Beatles over and over again, and having my first experience with Tarot cards and a Ouija board. I remember being told my life card was "Death." Not the most encouraging sign, to be sure.
At some point during this period of time, Ken Stetten called the Pierce Warwick Adoption Agency. This was the agency that processed my adoption. He apparently asked if there was any way to give me back, or to somehow alleviate his responsibility to me. The woman who took the call was named Ginger Swisher. About seven years before this she had received another all about me from my biological mother. She had asked that a note be put in my file indicating she would like me to be able to find her. She also asked that a name be put on my record -- James Michael. This was my father's name, and the name of the man she intended to marry. Although closed adoptions like mine are supposed to be kept strictly confidential, Ginger gave Ken contact information for my biological mother. I, of course, knew nothing about any of this at the time.
Meanwhile, that fall I started high school at Loudon Valley High. I stayed there for a couple months, and then was moved -- but not to New Mexico. I ended up moving to Leesburg with a single mother and her two kids. She had a boy and a girl. I don't remember anything about the boy, but I remember the girl was nearly as old as I was and still regularly wet the bed. The woman who lived there had different men come home with her. I remember living with headphones on, filling my head with Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall album. I transferred to Loudon County High School, the archrival of the school I had just attended. But I hardly cared, since I never stayed in the same place long enough to develop any loyalties -- to schools or people. It was my fifth school in two years, and the big change was still to come.
If you've ever experienced a day when you just knew something weird was going to happen, you know the feeling I had the first day of spring in 1980. I was 13 years old in the 9th grade, and all day long I felt like I was living in The Twilight Zone. So I really wasn't all that terribly surprised when I walked into the place where I lived and saw my Grandmother Stetten sitting there with a young dark haired woman. My grandmother Stetten had moved back to Virginia at some point, but it was very unusual for her to be in Leesburg. I asked her, "Grandma, how did you get here?" She answered, "This lovely young lady brought me here." We exchanged small talk for a few moments, and then my grandmother got up and left the room. At that point I turned to the lady and asked, "So, who are you lovely young lady?" She responded, "Are you ready for this?" Having no idea what I was agreeing to, I said, "Sure!"
"I'm your mother."
I stared at her, my mind whirling to try to figure out if she was telling the truth. She spoke again, and simply said, "Well?" I responded, "I'm in shock." When she said, "I'm in shock too," it only made sense to say, "Let's be in shock together!"
We stood and looked at one another, and after offering her a handshake, we instead exchanged a somewhat awkward embrace. Was I supposed to be hugging this woman that I had never met before ten minutes ago? Should I love her since she may well be my biological mother? Could I call her "Mom" when the woman I'd known as Mom for my childhood had died? I wish I could say I recall the rest of this encounter with the same clarity I have for that brief part of exchange. But we did talk for a while longer, and eventually they left.
Over the next couple months, plans were made for me to finish school early and move in with Virginia, my bio-mom, my birth mother. I didn't know what that was going to be like, but I figured anything had to be an upgrade from my current living situation. In May, I moved in with her. I discovered she was married to a Greek man named Panayiotis Gouskos. She had previously been married to another man (Michael Bugg), but never married my father. I found out then that my father Jimmy Isenberg died when I was five years old of a drug overdose. He had been addicted to heroin, but actually overdosed on methadone, a drug they gave him to help him break his heroin addiction.
I lived in a side room attached to the living room. We lived in the basement of a house that belonged to Virginia's father. She also had a baby daughter, my half-sister Carrie. When I moved in, I felt more loved and accepted here than I had for a long time. But there were still many tensions, and the longer I was there, the more obvious they were. Still, I was grateful for the provision, and for getting to know the family I would have had all along, had things gone differently. When they left to go to Greece for a month during the summer, I got that familiar feeling when they chose to leave me behind. But it gave me the opportunity to meet my father's family, and to have a far more life-changing experience in (of all places), Huntington, West Virginia.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
All Downhill from Here
When I was six, Mom and I moved from the townhouse in Fairfax to an apartment in Reston, VA. We lived in a corner apartment on the bottom floor. I attended Dogwood Elementary, where I had my first teacher crush on Ms. Henson. I was what is now called a "latchkey kid." Each day when I arrived home from school it was to an empty home. I didn't stay there for long though. Most of my childhood afternoons consisted of me dropping off whatever I had in my hands and going outside to play. Although the details are fuzzy, I remember walking in the woods, making a fort, playing football, and playing on a neighborhood playground. When I went outside to play, it never really mattered what precisely we did, it was still fun.
Then there were the weekends. Saturdays Mom (Berit) was almost always around. She didn't really have a social life or any friends. I don't really ever recall her going anywhere or doing anything. She was from Finland, and her family apparently fought against Hitler's Germany during World War 2. I don't really know how that relates, but looking back I have the sense she was emotionally damaged by those childhood memories. Nevertheless, one pleasant memory from those early Saturdays included her telling me to go out to our tiny garden to get some mint leaves. That was her way of saying she was going to make tea for us, a special treat. We sat together on the concrete porch drinking our tea, and for a moment all was well with the world.
Sundays Dad (Ken) would pick me up for the day. He would usually arrive at about 8:00 am. I remember I always used to ask him how far it was to get to his house -- seems like it was always either ten minutes or ten miles away. He lived on Lake Anne on the other side of Reston for a while, and later bought a house. I don't remember where that house was, but the first time I remember smoking was while I was there. I was seven or eight years old, smoking stolen cigarettes. I used an old turtle shell as an ash tray. Smoking became a regular part of my life. Before I went to the bus stop each morning, I used to go to the storage room in our apartment building and grab my hidden cigarettes to smoke.
When I was ten, Ken was the one who first realized I needed glasses. He asked me what a street sign on the road in front of his house said, and I answered, "what sign?" He was incredulous. I think he thought I was trying to be cheeky. I didn't see any sign, a fact which was decisively demonstrated by an eye exam that showed I was blind as a bat. I'm not sure why this wasn't caught by the routine school exams. Perhaps because I memorized what direction the other students said the "E's" faced and I just did the same thing they did. I think I faked a lot of things by just copying other people.
Apparently I learned to use a knife and fork by mirroring my mother. To this day, I am occasionally asked if I'm lefthanded by those who carefully watch me eat. Everything is apparently backwards, and yet not quite perfectly so. It is as though I was a mirror image of someone eating correctly. Because that's how I picked it up in the first place. One day as the two of us sat at the dinner table, I looked up and asked Berit, "Am I adopted?" She couldn't have looked more shocked if I'd drawn a gun and pointed it at her. After lengthy moments of stunned silence, she said, "Yes, you are adopted. What made you think so?" I explained something about looking at her and looking at Ken and just thinking it didn't make sense I was their child. I was ten.
Also that year, I got my first paper route. I delivered The Washington Times since it was afternoon delivery except on the weekends. I was able to get home from school, drop my things off, and go load up my paper cart to deliver the newspapers to make a little money before I started playing. Every day I would use the stopwatch on my digital watch to time how long it took me to deliver all the papers to all the apartments in my complex. I tried to find ways to maximize efficiency without compromising accuracy. I would run down the sidewalks pushing my paper cart to get finished as quickly as possible so I could start playing. At the end of every month, I would collect the money for the subscriptions, pay the Times for the papers and the leftover money was mine. Suddenly I had some money, and a couple new friends.
One friend was a young lady named Renee' who lived on the other end of the same apartment building. She was someone who always seemed like a safe person to talk with when life was hard. My best friends then were Don and Eddie. We hung out almost every day after school. I began smoking marijuana with them when I was ten (it was a big year). We had a stash in the woods where we kept it and the utensils we used (little pipes, rolling papers, etc). The afternoon time playing in the woods had taken an interesting turn. Another interest I had was fire. We used to start fires in the woods to stay warm, and sometimes just for fun.
Once we went into the local Drug Fair and bought some lantern oil. We filled a cup with the oil and went to a local playground. While we were there, a man ran toward us yelling about having a fire on a playground where there were kids playing. He rushed to the cup with the fire burning on top of the oil and there was a moment in my mind where time stopped and I yelled, "No!" Nevertheless, he stomped on the cup and the fuel all ignited at some time, creating a ball of fire that scorched everything in a 5-10 foot radius. He started screaming, and we ran. As I ran, I noticed that the front of my coat was completely burned off, so I took it off and threw it in the woods. The front of my jeans was stiff, and my hair was singed. I ran all the way home, and when I got there I trimmed my hair and cleaned up. I felt off the hook until the phone ran about a week later. When I answered, it was the man who had stomped on the fire. I have no idea how he found out who I was, but he explained that he blamed me for the third degree burns on his body. I hung up on him in fear, and that was the last I ever heard from him.
In the winter, we used to throw snowballs at cars. We would time the cars coming around the corner and throw our snowballs to try to hit the windshields. We got pretty good at launching them from the woods beside Colts Neck Road. It was great fun . . . until the direct hit on the police car. We knew we were in trouble when the lights went on and he stopped his car immediately in the road. He ran straight up the hill toward the woods, and we scattered. I made it home, but apparently someone else didn't, because some time later he knocked on the door of my apartment and explained to my mother what had taken place. He required me to write a three page paper on why I shouldn't throw rocks or snowballs at cars. At the time, three pages seemed like it may as well have been a hundred. But I guess I did it.
My other brush with the law came when I was teaching a friend how to shoplift from the Drug Fair. I had just slipped a Chunky bar into my pocket when I noticed a manager had spotted us from the little diner upstairs. As he ran down the stairs toward us, my friend and I ran out the door. We cut left and tried to race around the corner where we could hide without being seen. But just when I thought I'd gotten away, my friend called out "Peter," and I knew there wasn't any point in running. He had already told them my name. They dragged us upstairs to the office where they called the police and our mothers. I don't really remember exactly what they said or did, but I remember thinking I got off the hook.
I was a voracious reader. I read nearly anything I could get my hands on. My fascination with dinosaurs soon led me to pursue more knowledge about evolution. I used to think church kids were rather amusing with their childlike belief in a God who shaped and made the world in a week or so. I enjoyed getting into conversations with them about evolution because it was so clear to me they didn't have the foggiest idea what they were talking about. Besides, church kids really didn't seem any better or nicer than anyone else.
But my interest in reading also led me to read works of fiction as well. My early experiences with Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown quickly gave way to a fascination with fantasy. I read a lot of fantasy books, but what most captured me were the books by J.R.R. Tolkein. At first, I loved The Hobbit. But something about The Lord of the Rings trilogy absolutely enthralled me. I couldn't get enough of them.
When I was in elementary school, I was often in trouble. In the classroom, I was ahead of the other kids. In 6th grade math, they stuck me in a corner with an algebra book and told me to teach myself. But socially I was retarded. I did everything I could to get attention and it didn't particularly matter to me what sort of attention I got. At one point, I remember my Mom started taking me to these group therapy sessions where they stuck me and a bunch of other "troubled" kids in a room with foam bats where we were supposed to beat one another's brains in. I'm not sure how that was supposed to help me, but it was kind of fun.
Because I had skipped a grade, I finished elementary school early. My first year of middle school was at Herndon Intermediate. But I only went there a short time because they had just built a new high school. They decided to start middle school kids there so we could all grow into the school together. It was the fall of 1978. I was twelve years old and in the 8th grade at South Lakes High School. The school was a change of scenery and everything looked and smelled new. But Mom was sick.
She had what she thought was the flu. She couldn't keep anything down, though she tried to keep drinking water and eat toast. At first, I kept up my usual routine. She hardly ever got sick and I knew she would recover quickly. But after several days, I stayed home more. I began to get concerned because it didn't seem she was getting much better. She called the doctor who she went to see for her diabetes and he told her to come immediately to the hospital. She called a cab, and the driver came to the front of our apartment building. I followed her out and hugged her. Then I asked her, "Promise me I'll see you again?" She answered, "I promise." It was October 14th, 1978, and the last time I saw her.
Then there were the weekends. Saturdays Mom (Berit) was almost always around. She didn't really have a social life or any friends. I don't really ever recall her going anywhere or doing anything. She was from Finland, and her family apparently fought against Hitler's Germany during World War 2. I don't really know how that relates, but looking back I have the sense she was emotionally damaged by those childhood memories. Nevertheless, one pleasant memory from those early Saturdays included her telling me to go out to our tiny garden to get some mint leaves. That was her way of saying she was going to make tea for us, a special treat. We sat together on the concrete porch drinking our tea, and for a moment all was well with the world.
Sundays Dad (Ken) would pick me up for the day. He would usually arrive at about 8:00 am. I remember I always used to ask him how far it was to get to his house -- seems like it was always either ten minutes or ten miles away. He lived on Lake Anne on the other side of Reston for a while, and later bought a house. I don't remember where that house was, but the first time I remember smoking was while I was there. I was seven or eight years old, smoking stolen cigarettes. I used an old turtle shell as an ash tray. Smoking became a regular part of my life. Before I went to the bus stop each morning, I used to go to the storage room in our apartment building and grab my hidden cigarettes to smoke.
When I was ten, Ken was the one who first realized I needed glasses. He asked me what a street sign on the road in front of his house said, and I answered, "what sign?" He was incredulous. I think he thought I was trying to be cheeky. I didn't see any sign, a fact which was decisively demonstrated by an eye exam that showed I was blind as a bat. I'm not sure why this wasn't caught by the routine school exams. Perhaps because I memorized what direction the other students said the "E's" faced and I just did the same thing they did. I think I faked a lot of things by just copying other people.
Apparently I learned to use a knife and fork by mirroring my mother. To this day, I am occasionally asked if I'm lefthanded by those who carefully watch me eat. Everything is apparently backwards, and yet not quite perfectly so. It is as though I was a mirror image of someone eating correctly. Because that's how I picked it up in the first place. One day as the two of us sat at the dinner table, I looked up and asked Berit, "Am I adopted?" She couldn't have looked more shocked if I'd drawn a gun and pointed it at her. After lengthy moments of stunned silence, she said, "Yes, you are adopted. What made you think so?" I explained something about looking at her and looking at Ken and just thinking it didn't make sense I was their child. I was ten.
Also that year, I got my first paper route. I delivered The Washington Times since it was afternoon delivery except on the weekends. I was able to get home from school, drop my things off, and go load up my paper cart to deliver the newspapers to make a little money before I started playing. Every day I would use the stopwatch on my digital watch to time how long it took me to deliver all the papers to all the apartments in my complex. I tried to find ways to maximize efficiency without compromising accuracy. I would run down the sidewalks pushing my paper cart to get finished as quickly as possible so I could start playing. At the end of every month, I would collect the money for the subscriptions, pay the Times for the papers and the leftover money was mine. Suddenly I had some money, and a couple new friends.
One friend was a young lady named Renee' who lived on the other end of the same apartment building. She was someone who always seemed like a safe person to talk with when life was hard. My best friends then were Don and Eddie. We hung out almost every day after school. I began smoking marijuana with them when I was ten (it was a big year). We had a stash in the woods where we kept it and the utensils we used (little pipes, rolling papers, etc). The afternoon time playing in the woods had taken an interesting turn. Another interest I had was fire. We used to start fires in the woods to stay warm, and sometimes just for fun.
Once we went into the local Drug Fair and bought some lantern oil. We filled a cup with the oil and went to a local playground. While we were there, a man ran toward us yelling about having a fire on a playground where there were kids playing. He rushed to the cup with the fire burning on top of the oil and there was a moment in my mind where time stopped and I yelled, "No!" Nevertheless, he stomped on the cup and the fuel all ignited at some time, creating a ball of fire that scorched everything in a 5-10 foot radius. He started screaming, and we ran. As I ran, I noticed that the front of my coat was completely burned off, so I took it off and threw it in the woods. The front of my jeans was stiff, and my hair was singed. I ran all the way home, and when I got there I trimmed my hair and cleaned up. I felt off the hook until the phone ran about a week later. When I answered, it was the man who had stomped on the fire. I have no idea how he found out who I was, but he explained that he blamed me for the third degree burns on his body. I hung up on him in fear, and that was the last I ever heard from him.
In the winter, we used to throw snowballs at cars. We would time the cars coming around the corner and throw our snowballs to try to hit the windshields. We got pretty good at launching them from the woods beside Colts Neck Road. It was great fun . . . until the direct hit on the police car. We knew we were in trouble when the lights went on and he stopped his car immediately in the road. He ran straight up the hill toward the woods, and we scattered. I made it home, but apparently someone else didn't, because some time later he knocked on the door of my apartment and explained to my mother what had taken place. He required me to write a three page paper on why I shouldn't throw rocks or snowballs at cars. At the time, three pages seemed like it may as well have been a hundred. But I guess I did it.
My other brush with the law came when I was teaching a friend how to shoplift from the Drug Fair. I had just slipped a Chunky bar into my pocket when I noticed a manager had spotted us from the little diner upstairs. As he ran down the stairs toward us, my friend and I ran out the door. We cut left and tried to race around the corner where we could hide without being seen. But just when I thought I'd gotten away, my friend called out "Peter," and I knew there wasn't any point in running. He had already told them my name. They dragged us upstairs to the office where they called the police and our mothers. I don't really remember exactly what they said or did, but I remember thinking I got off the hook.
I was a voracious reader. I read nearly anything I could get my hands on. My fascination with dinosaurs soon led me to pursue more knowledge about evolution. I used to think church kids were rather amusing with their childlike belief in a God who shaped and made the world in a week or so. I enjoyed getting into conversations with them about evolution because it was so clear to me they didn't have the foggiest idea what they were talking about. Besides, church kids really didn't seem any better or nicer than anyone else.
But my interest in reading also led me to read works of fiction as well. My early experiences with Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown quickly gave way to a fascination with fantasy. I read a lot of fantasy books, but what most captured me were the books by J.R.R. Tolkein. At first, I loved The Hobbit. But something about The Lord of the Rings trilogy absolutely enthralled me. I couldn't get enough of them.
When I was in elementary school, I was often in trouble. In the classroom, I was ahead of the other kids. In 6th grade math, they stuck me in a corner with an algebra book and told me to teach myself. But socially I was retarded. I did everything I could to get attention and it didn't particularly matter to me what sort of attention I got. At one point, I remember my Mom started taking me to these group therapy sessions where they stuck me and a bunch of other "troubled" kids in a room with foam bats where we were supposed to beat one another's brains in. I'm not sure how that was supposed to help me, but it was kind of fun.
Because I had skipped a grade, I finished elementary school early. My first year of middle school was at Herndon Intermediate. But I only went there a short time because they had just built a new high school. They decided to start middle school kids there so we could all grow into the school together. It was the fall of 1978. I was twelve years old and in the 8th grade at South Lakes High School. The school was a change of scenery and everything looked and smelled new. But Mom was sick.
She had what she thought was the flu. She couldn't keep anything down, though she tried to keep drinking water and eat toast. At first, I kept up my usual routine. She hardly ever got sick and I knew she would recover quickly. But after several days, I stayed home more. I began to get concerned because it didn't seem she was getting much better. She called the doctor who she went to see for her diabetes and he told her to come immediately to the hospital. She called a cab, and the driver came to the front of our apartment building. I followed her out and hugged her. Then I asked her, "Promise me I'll see you again?" She answered, "I promise." It was October 14th, 1978, and the last time I saw her.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
