With the buzz word “dysfunctional families” so popular, nearly everyone can either claim to have come from a dysfunctional family or to know someone who has. With the childhood sexual abuse we girls suffered, my family was not dysfunctional—it was dystopian. It’s my memories that are dysfunctional.

As I walk Savannah and let my mind wander—it takes such strange, serpentine paths that I wonder why I remember those things. I can’t think of any way they have enriched my life or taught me valuable life lessons. So why do I remember them? Yet, I do, and somehow they have woven themselves together to form the fabric of Me.

For example, although I was born in Texas my earliest childhood memories begin in California. I remember my “pet” scorpion when I was about three. When my father realized what it was—he lobbed the can as far away as he could and until he explained how dangerous my “pet” was—I was shocked and heartbroken.

As a five-year-old child walking home from school I rushed into people’s yards and recovered drowned moles. Much to the distress of my grandmother who lived with us, I lugged the dead critters home and lined them up on the porch rail in the sunshine. I was convinced that when they dried out—they would wake up and live again.

One day I brought home the much run over carcass of a black cat. It was dry and nearly paper thin, but I couldn’t bear to leave it in the street to be run over by more cars. Grandmother came unglued. She lectured me about the danger of rabies and described the horrible disease to me. For weeks after that when my younger sister Leslie (brilliant and talented author Leslie P Garcia) and I were alone in a room, I ran around on my hands and knees growling and barking and telling her that I would bite her and she would get rabies. She was terrified. I hope she has since forgiven me.

I remember the boy my age who let bees land on his hands, the boy slightly older than me who ate broken glass to show off, the boy with the bloodied nose that I took home for Grandmother to help after he was attacked walking home from school, the way the Santa Anna winds blew dirt into our faces and blew the girls dresses up over their heads.

I remember the burro we had that hated women and terrorized Mom, Grandmother, and me. The olive grove we had and how many hours it took to prepare the olives and fill jars with them. Chasing down rabbits with our Great Dane. She would chase them into metal culverts and I would tip the culverts up into a wooden box and keep the wild rabbits as pets. I remember climbing the mountain in back of the house and bringing down cactus to plant in my cactus garden.

For some reason—which I now realize must have had to do with some major crime he had committed that was never discovered, my father loaded up a U-Haul trailer full of chickens and jars of olives behind a Ford wooden paneled station wagon and drove my grandmother, me, two cats, and one Great Dane dog from California to the Florida Everglades where lovely birds lined up around the lagoon morning and evening, and wild animals including bear, boars, Key deer, raccoons, lizards, alligators, and snakes filled the wild places. It was an idyllic location—albeit dangerous—for an adventurous child who loved animals. However, we were so poor that all we had to eat every day was peanut butter sandwiches or pancakes. Every. Single. Day. Every. Single. Meal. To this day—I do not eat pancakes.

Then on to Splendora, Texas, where we continued to live out of the station wagon while my father built a log house in the pine woods. Grandmother continued cooking pancakes over an open fire and helped with the construction. My job was to mix mud and fill the cracks between the logs. When I finished filling the day’s cracks I mixed different colors of clay and fed my stick dolls. I didn’t have even one real toy, but I spent many blissful hours feeding my pretend stick family.

Mom finally arrived to join us and brought my sister Leslie, brother Gregory, and sister Vicky with her. Vicky was just a baby and doctors had given her penicillin not knowing she was allergic to it. Grandmother spent the rest of the day and the night holding Vicky in her arms and walking with her to keep her alive.

The cabin had no door or windows. It was only roofed halfway and when a hurricane roared up the coast and hit close to Splendora, our chickens and three goats sought shelter inside with us. Water rose up to the level of the bed. Our parents had gone somewhere and left us with Grandmother. All of us were on top of the bed to stay dry. Grandmother stood on a chair cooking pancakes over an old gas stove—we had no electricity. Grandmother was deathly afraid of snakes, but when a cottonmouth (poisonous) snake floated in on top of the water, Grandmother jumped down from the chair and went after the snake with a broom.

So many more memories—but I don’t live in the past and I don’t re-live the horrific ones like the childhood sexual abuse. Long ago I crammed it into a closet and locked the door. It can’t get out unless I unlock it…and I seldom do.

Dysfunctional, disjointed memories. Yet, somehow God collected them and wove them into the fabric that is me. Reminds me of Psalm 139, “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Somehow God drew all the dysfunction into a working order. Except for math. God is perfect. I’m not.Amazon.com: Stephanie Parker McKean: books, biography, latest update