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amusejanetmason.com ('s) featured writer Cori Grachek, LSW
This
is Cori Grachek’s first published piece, from her collection of short stories,
A Place Inside. Cori Grachek was born and raised in Greenwich Village,
New York City. She currently resides in Center City, Philadelphia, with her
partner and her puppy. She is a Psychotherapist in Private Practice who has
been working with survivors of trauma for 17 years. She runs Satya Group which
focuses training and education on addressing symptoms of Trauma with Yoga.
Cori has studied with Janet Mason at Temple University Center City in Philadelphia.
For information on upcoming classes, click here.
Close
My mother,
my mother, my mother, my God, how to explain my mother. She made the shocking
mundane so that this was the baseline for my reality. Yet in so many ways the
basic was lost. My mother is my greatest heartbreak, struggle, creator of many
of my dreams and my initial mind opener. Though it wasn’t exactly a mind
opening because my mind was never closed. Growing up in Greenwich Village, in
the early 1970s, where everyone was so different that people were the same.
People were gay, straight or somewhere in between. Art was your greatest currency,
because not just anyone could do it although it did seem as if everyone was
trying. Boundaries, unfortunately for me, were a thing of the past, as this
was the pre season to AIDs. This was the season of leather and the feather boa.
Splashing champagne parties at The Ritz, orgies in the VIP rooms at Studio (54),
Blondie’s coming out at The Mudd club. My mother donned her multicolored
fingernails and her biker jacket as her cameras swung dangerously from her bosom.
She documented the era, myself in tow, not three feet behind. As usual.
It was exciting. It was scary. It was not the time of the child. I spent hours
in my room hiding…creating caves with layers of clothing. Numbing myself
and forging safety with my endless reading of Nancy Drew novels into the wee
hours. After having repeatedly checked the gates on the windows, I would wait
to finally sleep until I heard the click of her key in the lock. I would quickly
turn off the light and sigh. If I was lucky she would be alone.
It was a dark time, a hard time to remember for me. Even now, writing this,
I find that it doesn’t flow. It hurts as if the words, feelings and thoughts
are coming through this stubborn tunnel of emotions, wrapped in layers of dust
and spider webs the thickness of insulation…and I am physically willing
and pushing them to come out. This is so close to my skin…so close to my
tears.
The abuse started with my mom who knows when…early, three or four, perhaps
earlier…but she, she just really didn’t know. My grandmother was angry
and could turn on a dime with a fire in her eyes that was the color of crazy.
My grandfather would step in between and bodily protect me from her… as
if in the past he hadn’t and now he was determined that for me, she would
not hurt me. My grandmother was asked, at a young, adolescent age to sing with
the Metropolitan Opera. Her father felt this was an inappropriate career for
a young lady. It was for my great grandfather to hold season tickets to the
New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Philharmonic,
but not for his daughter to sing in the starting line up. We surmise that she
was hurt inside herself from about this point on…and as she got older it
only got worse. This was my mother, inheriting all of these feelings, her dime
dancing…but determined not to be the wasted talent. To give me something
different or more accurately herself something different. And me? I was a part
of her. She rolled me up and unrolled me as if I was an extension of her arm.
In a world in which she so desperately needed to be the center and in which
she never would be and therefore neither would I.
Grooming.
I can remember being seven. Brushing my hair over and over until it was glossy.
Preparing to go upstairs to our neighbors for a party. My cheeks were warm with
the anticipation of seeing our neighbor’s boyfriend, Patrick. Would he
like me? Would he like what I was wearing? As I picked my clothes out and laid
them on the bed. My mother teasing me for my carefulness. Did she know, I think.
This was my first memory of sexual abuse.
I had this memory when I was 19, a sophomore in college. It is not as if I repressed
them, or all of them. More that they had been floating on the periphery, waiting
to be connected to a time and place when I had more love, security and understanding
in my life. I told my mother, in a green garden, bustling, café in Greenwich
Village, while home on break. Her response was, “Oh, Yes I was sexually
abused as well, by your grandmother.” Talk about reassuring. I could feel
myself entering that black void that I would tumble down into. The feeling of
tremendous imbalance, unsupported, lost. As if I was looking in the mirror and
had twice the amount to worry about when I should have been cradled, and supported
from behind.
It was not long after that I recalled that my mother had known I was being abused
by Patrick, my 40
year old babysitter, who lived on the fifth floor of our Greenwhich Village
apartment building with his girlfriend. She caught him hurting me in the back
of a car on our way to the beach. Her plan for protection was to tell him to
sit with her in the front and then in the months and years to come, to leave
me with him and his girlfriend, repeatedly. This broke my heart. I have dealt
with the backlash of this incident and this abuse for my entire life. It still
affects me.
I truly believe she did not know what to do. After years of screaming fights
of anger I forced her to take responsibility through my sheer perseverance.
She heard all of my feelings loud and clear. I fought for myself like she never
did, until I could finally stop fighting. When I realized I didn’t want
to fight anymore, I realized I didn’t have to. I learned through years
of therapy to stand for myself. That I was worthy of love. And then I began
to find it, in myself, my mentors, my best friend, my friends and finally in
my partner. And then in the least likely place of all, in my mother.
I gathered distance from her so I could actually be closer. I felt such love,
which allowed me to see her more clearly. What I saw broke my heart and continues
to do so. She is still that unfed child. It is hard when we surpass our parents
and realize that they aren’t coming with us. Maybe to visit but not to
stay. She whirls and whirls, the hungry child with light in her eyes and pain
in her heart, not knowing exactly how to feed herself. And I, I get too close
and burned. My expectations too high, unrealistic, disappointed. But when I
get just the right balance, I receive so much.
She is open.
Pretty much open to everyone. And what experiences I have had in her care and
what things that we now can share. My first manicure, at age nine, from the
six foot two transvestite. And when I asked why was she so big, my mother explained
“That some men feel more like women inside and so they dressed themselves
accordingly.” Growing up racing from screenings of La Cage aux folles to
events for the Rainforest Coalition, to the up and coming artist’s shows
in SOHO. Sandra Bernhart’s first stand up in the east village, the American
premier of Blue Lips. Flitting in and out of the Garment District with various
designers trading their wares for her photos. The men of Fire Island. Lying
next to my mother, as she and Rudolph design Danceteria on scraps of paper.
Skating, in my permanently attached roller-skates, at age 10, through the plasticked
club, prior to its opening. Watching Studio 54, and thinking Mike Myers did
a really good job. His portrayal of Steve Rubel was exactly how I remembered
him, seedy but exceedingly kind to a very uncomfortable, little girl. Remembering
all of this first hand, my friends watch, disbelievingly, as we view a synopsis
of my life on VHI I love The 70s and The 80s.
She laid the arts at my feet. She pretty much did anything she put her mind
to: Photographer, journalist, food critic, artist, public relations dynamo.
She instilled in me the idea that I had no limits. I could accomplish anything.
There was something great about this. I have lived my life believing that there
isn’t much that I cannot master as long as I work hard, visualize it and
follow through. I have lived surrounded by beautiful, original, art. I have
grown such a respect for anyone who has the guts to put themselves out there
in order to create. She has formed in me a perpetual thirst for active creation.
So that I am desolate and unfulfilled when I am not involved in the warm, fiery,
glow of the artistic process. As an artist myself, she has been my greatest
supporter. Always encouraging me to reach, complimenting me on my wit and insight.
Understanding that this is seen through the bias of a mother’s eye, this
support has been essential to my evolution.
She integrated into me the respect and yearn for all cultures and spirituality.
She told me from the time I was a very little girl that I was powerful spiritually.
She taught me to tap into all senses and to believe in the importance of what
they received from and perceived in the world. That all life and spirit is connected.
To be bewildered by my friends who are developmental neurobiologists yet cannot
see the miracles occurring every day underneath the belly of their microscopes.
She taught me the I-ching, to meditate, took me to celebrations of Kwanza and
Native American tribal rituals. From these experiences I developed an internal
calm, feeling strongly the power of connectedness. And ironically, along with
all of the other ways that I have been blessed, this calm connection saved me
during those dark years and fulfills me in these lighter ones.
My mother still sees this world through the eyes of a wondrous child. I come
home to repeated messages about the exciting events she has most recently attended
or movies she has seen. She is forever calling me to espouse her views on P-Diddy
(“He really is such a nice, young, man.”) or who she saw at the latest
film festival, or who her favorite character on the L Word is. In this aspect
I view the world with similar amazement. The laugh of a child. The sun tapping
off the top of the glinting buildings. The whisper of hope or a smile on the
day that is the grayest for your heart.
And finally at times I am even able to cry with her. There really isn’t
anyone that I know that is as complicated as she is. It hurts and boggles my
mind. But when I don’t think too hard, accept and let go, I wouldn’t
trade these experiences that shaped me or the woman who conducted them, for
the world. And in her own words, “No one will ever say you had a boring
mother!”
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