Deus Absconditus

Concealed God. Oh, all those years of the dreaded Latin lessons! And now it is fun when some phrase rears its head. Who knew?

Who knew? Was there some little corner in my being that knew, even then, that there was something for me that would someday delight in words, reading, talking, my God, talking! and telling stories? I don't remember talking all that much except there is some family myth that I used to follow my brother around as he terrorized our little planet. My mother says he climbed to the top of the fridge, up the front, when he was 8 months old. He also started walking then and hasn't slowed down since, except when he had that bad back thing and that was agony for him. Apparently I followed him everywhere, talking a blue streak and interspersing my monologue every few sentences with a "Huh Bill?" To which he would give some fleeting nod and go about his business. (Sounds like a lot of men.)

Then there was the fact that I made, wrote, created puppet shows and plays. I was the boss of it all. I was the one with the stories to tell, except when my Irish uncles came and then I sat at the foot of masters. Not to put a too fine point on it, when I wrote one play in 4th grade, everyone had to bow to the ground in front of me and my line was "I am Jupiter, dare not defy me!" I was a princess who had been stolen by those people who called themselves my parents. I joined the circus many times in my telling of how things were. I forced my brother and sister to rehearse endlessly with me. Our act was called "The Flying Zeros."

All this stuff came from my imagination. All the stimulus was from books. We had no TV and I hadn't yet seen a movie. Pig Latin was my first foreign language. My grandparents had the first foreign accents I ever heard. Grandma Braucher-German, and the Caffreys could put on the Irish.

Was some part of what would become so important in my life already there?  Was my hidden deity bursting out through my childhood play? Did reading the wars of Julius Caesar expand my horizons? I connect with words. I shape my reality with words. I am not a court reporter. My interest is in the spirit of an event as it hit my perception. And, in a certain way, all our stories are exactly the same. The god within is trying to find expression through the life we live.