Tonight I got out a set of chisels and set to work counter sinking the big heavy hinges for my new door. Hammering and chiseling away, I was struck by a chilling memory.

Regular Mom is reading Augustin Burroughs right now. She is rightly entertained. God, is that man funny. And sad. When I read "Running With Scissors" I couldn't get over the similarities between his childhood and mine. If he could have written that book as it was happening, so I could have read that book as I was living my childhood, I would have laughed and laughed. I might have said, "cool." But I read that book as an adult. And I think I have never been so angry about my childhood, as I was after I read that book. Everything that is funny about it is extreme and perhaps difficult for some to read as literal truth. But not for me. For me, I read it just like I assume he wrote it, as the exact truth. His situation was more extreme than mine, sort of. I did not live with an insane adoptive psychotherapist. No one was "bible dipping" at my house. But the dark truth of it, the abandonment and narcissism in particular, make me furious, especially reading as a parent.

I was so numb, so starved, and so willing as a young woman, that I would follow nearly anyone anywhere. Just out of curiosity to see what might happen. Thus I found myself, one summer afternoon on campus at ASU, following a wiry old man up into a deserted dorm to "see his wood carvings." When we got up some floors and down a dark hall he rounded on me and opened his set of chisels. Then he started yelling at me about being gullible. He was so angry. And he was all about his chisels. Asking me did I understand how sharp they are? Just then a maid happened by, down the hall from us but loud enough to startle angry Mr. Chisel, who clearly expected us to be isolated. He jerked around, started cussing, and I ran. I ran thinking, "how odd." I was not thinking, "I am in danger." Nor was I thinking about that maid. I was just running out of the building, kind of wondering how that got so creepy so fast, and nearly at the same time disregarding the whole event in the disembodied style I lived at that time.

But NOW, in my own safe home with my children tucked in and my big strong protective yet incredibly gentle husband at my elbow, now, working away with my own chisels and noticing the force of their leverage, I feel sick.

And I feel sick for my children. I could write the story of the chisel man as one funny event in a long series of events, the way hip teenagers might tell it. As a parent I understand that youthful need to see the darkness of adults as tragically and absurdly funny. Yet, I no longer have that need. All I want now, is to see the darkness exactly as it is, clearly defined and without denial. And I want to teach my kids to see just as clearly. But I know there is a certain amount of learning that has to happen out in the real world. And this just scares me nearly crazy.