Bells in a Casino -- A Personal Essay

When I was much younger, perhaps around seven years old, ringing the church bells was quite a spectacle. Our priest would dismiss the service and there would be this almost audible sigh of relief among us kids, although nowadays I like to imagine that our parents were more relieved than we were. Dismissal was an exciting thing, a time I looked forward to all sermon long. It meant playing on the playground out back, eating as much coffee cake as we could stuff in our mouths, and ringing the bells. And the bells were old. They looked old, felt old, and sounded old. At dismissal, my brother, sister and I would bolt to the entrance of St. John’s and grab hold of the thick, dirty ropes, aged from years of oily hands. It was always a rush to get there first, and I was the youngest and the fastest, but this also made me the lightest. So I would get there breathing hard and wait for Ian and Libby to get there too, and that was when the fun would start. Ian would grab hold right above my hands, Libby below, and we would all pull together. Then they’d let go, but I’d hold on, and the weight of the heavy bells would send me flying into the air like birds, like a carnival ride. If someone were to pass by across the street and look over, they would probably think kids were flying. And in a way, we were.

My brother, sister and I were like dice in the hands of an amateur casino player. The shake-shake-shake of events between sweaty palms would determine our flight and the crash that either landed us in luck or disaster. My father, with his kind face and loving heart, did not possess this luck I speak of. A messy divorce left him stranded for years until he found his second love and a stepmother for us. Stepmothers are weird. I don’t think they are evil, but they easily misunderstand and are just as easily misunderstood. She had her work cut out for her… raising three chaotic kids in a financially failing household is hard enough. Establishing yourself comfortably as a permanent part of the family? Nearly impossible. She loved us and we loved her, but there’s something so vital about the connections she missed the first three years of my life that she’d never be able to make up for. If you have taken any general psychology class, they’ll tell you that you only start forming memories around three years old. I believe all of the events and emotions you experienced before you turned three are stored in a place that you can’t consciously access. All the rest, or at least most of it anyway, is kept where you can easily pluck out memories at will. That being said, even at three I knew she wasn’t my mother, and never would be. No one’s fault.

Libby and I were flower-girls at my father’s second wedding, and my brother the ring-bearer. We were all equal then, all young and not understanding the big things yet. My brother, not yet plagued by the effects of a disorder that would cause rifts in many of his early relationships. Our parents, not yet too busy trying to put dinner on the table. My sister, not yet burdened by raising my brother and I because of it. Myself, not yet taking care of it all and piecing everyone and everything back together.

During the service I was to sit quietly in the pews up front. But I was a terribly curious child, and among the long, boring speeches managed to find one of those tiny pencils they put along the benches, for whatever reason (one of the many questions my father’s sermons never answered). I thought it looked quite sharp and alluring, and in order to test this theory I jabbed my finger quite harder than I’d meant to. Blood looks funny on a white dress. My little outfit became covered in it. Like a tiny, ignorant Sleeping Beauty, they whisked me away (“they” being my babysitter) to an upstairs room for repairs. I regret not seeing that binding kiss. I did not get to ring the bells that day.

My mother told me once that her and my father won it big in Los Vegas when they were young newlyweds, and then lost it just as quickly. I don’t remember how they spent so much money so fast, and I don’t think she’d be able to tell you either. There aren’t many things my mom can recall. They aren’t only repressed, they’re completely gone. I didn’t used to believe this. I just thought she was very reserved and secretive. By high school the most information I had gathered on her was that her favorite animal was an owl and that she loved the color purple. And we never had people over. Not once. I was never sure if it was because she didn’t have friends or because she was too embarrassed of how messy the house was. One time, someone came to pick her up, and Libby, Ian, and I all ran outside to meet the stranger. She didn’t talk much, and quickly whisked our mother away to whatever place they were going to eat dinner. None of us remember the visitor’s name.

My mother is an enigma. The key to understanding her is to not understand her. Forget your entire basis of understanding, and start from scratch. In fact, take this same technique and apply it to my entire family. It is quite easy to gloss over the matte and sugar coat the sour within the margins of paper, but there is nothing glossy, embellished, or sweet about my family. We are all sour and rough and fire, fire, fire. But there’s something beautiful about disaster and passionate about hatred.

There’s a lot of hatred. It didn’t start inside those old brass bells, but resided within the noise that followed. It was expected, and thus observed. My mother and father will never fondly think of one another, my brother will never wish my sister to be alive, and I will probably never fully love the situation I was born into.

But I was born into it, married to it. The dissonance among our family can sometimes be grand, and sound beautiful. None of us see dad much nowadays, and that’s sad but okay. My mother is endlessly stressed out, and that’s sad but all we’ve ever known. My sister is materialistic and so loving you’ll feel at a loss. And my beloved twin brother has Asperger’s and is the smartest kid you’ll ever meet.

Across the years, those bells never did stop ringing. We never stopped flying, that dicer became a little more confident. All of these things, I believe, are true. And people will tell you that you must see something in order to believe it. But those people don’t understand. It is the things that you believe that endow you with sight.