Streams of Comfort

Another fifth week special post. This is a story in progress. It’s an idea that I’ve been wanting to develop for a while. It is fiction, but many of the characters and themes are relevant to my own life as well as the lives of those around me. I hope you find comfort in reading this tale of nostalgia and a longing for adventure. We never know how our own stories will be written out, but we are blessed to be able to trust that our Creator always works out all things for our good. Happy reading!

The Brooklyn Bridge, 1943
“1, 2, 3, 4, I declare a thumb war…”, cried my brother Frank in his squeaky voice. He was a little more than a year older than me, but I already had a lower voice. It suited him though, because he was always talking, and you needed a good voice to be heard.
His thumb was longer than mine, but I always managed to beat him. As if the innocent games of war came more naturally to me. I did dream of going to war, unlike the rest of the war-tired world. I wanted to fight, not because I felt it was the heroic or the right thing to do, but because it was the only thing that would get me out of this orphanage faster.
We had spent the last 7 and half years in this orphanage right near the Brooklyn Bridge. Haven House, funded by a Catholic mission. My older brother Frank, my younger sisters Rosemary, Emmy, and Jackie, and I had been taken here by our mother because she could not care for us anymore. She left our father without a backwards glance. Taking our youngest sister Rebecca, only 3 months old at the time, with her to her parents’ house in Long Island. That was the last time I saw Rebecca or my mother.
Our father, unfortunately, still hung around. Clinging to us like a piece of gum that refuses to come off your shoe. He had no idea why my mother left, even though she shouted the reasons loud enough for our neighbors to hear. They knew, we knew. But he remained deaf.
He spent years coming to family visit days for the children that had parents still. I thought the orphans were better off because they didn’t have any expectations. Expectations of parental love. Some years, he would show up with gifts aplenty.
For Rosemary’s 7th birthday, he had gifted her with a precious American Girl doll. The very one she had talked about nonstop for a year after we had walked past the storefront one day on a field trip. He came with his hands behind his back and an anticipating grin on his face.
“Mi nina, guess what papa brought you?”, he asked with his thick Puerto Rican accent.
A bit sheepishly she replied, “What, papa?”
And in front of all of us, he pulled out a brand-new doll, complete with accessories. The doll was almost cleaner than Rosemary.
Rosemary was overjoyed of course. She couldn’t stop marveling at the doll’s long, flowing brown hair and its hazel-colored eyes. As if Rose didn’t have the same features. But I guess that was a product of not having a mirror to look at oneself.
The rest of us got candy and a rare hug since papa was feeling generous and affectionate. Quite a rare contrast to how he normally was.
There was one summer where he was allowed to take us out of the home for a day. He, playing the role of a responsible parent, left the girls with his girlfriend at the time, a swanky, young lawyer’s daughter, and took Frank and me to the casino.
I’m not sure what he meant for us to accomplish that day. It was more like he felt obligated to bring us because he couldn’t interrupt his daily routine. Like take your child to work day, only gambling was my papa’s job. He knew everyone in the casino, from the table cleaner to the manager. They welcomed him, some with pity in their eyes, which he seemed blind to, and some with dollar bills rolling in their eyes, like a slot machine.
Frank and I found ways to entertain ourselves. We tried pretending we were old enough to drink and walked up to the bar with painted mustaches. Granted, Frank and I were both quite tall for our age, 9 and 10 respectively. Still, as soon as we sat on the stools, the bartender handed us soda water and told us, “Nice staches”.
We wandered around outside after we had exhausted all our failed attempts at getting one chip, while our papa was still riding the high of losing the little he had. Outside the steps was a flier for the draft. Uncle Sam’s gaze was piercing through my tired, orphan eyes. We had been told that the orphanage was going to prepare us for the future. We could go to college, get a fluffy middle-class job, and pretend that the orphanage was just a dream. They hadn’t said anything about the military, though I’d assumed that was a valid option too.
Looking at the flier, my mind started wandering. Imagining machine guns larger than a full-grown man, tanks bigger than the great whales of the deep. What if I could commandeer weapons like that? Decide whether a man will live to see another sunrise?
It was a dark turn for my 9-year-old mind, but the darkness followed me. It thought of me, beckoned me to imagine the power of life and death. War seemed to be all around me anyway. The games that we played as children only seemed like miniature scale versions of the real conflicts, so I guessed it couldn’t be that bad.
My father drove us over the Brooklyn Bridge to take us back home. I remember watching the lights and cables suspended over the East River. I thought about what made a structure so sturdy, even the constant pressure of the water couldn’t phase it. Humans have no such luck. Our fragile frames are shaken by anything that crosses paths with us. The false promises of the casino, the sucking void of a city of opportunity…
Maybe it was just my papa’s life that was fragile, so I vowed mine wouldn’t be.
Brooklyn was not a great place for the weak of mind anyway. Its streets could be unforgiving. I liked that there was not a requirement for forgiveness. I didn’t need to be “good” because no one expected me to be. My sister, Rosemary, loved to remind me that we were supposed to represent our families and be good role models for the sake of being good. I, of course, would retort with the fact that I was doing a wonderful job, if that was indeed the job description.
Of course, the rivers of influence flow both ways. My familial role models have influenced me as well. For better or for worse.
Abandoning every person that showed even the slightest interest in me? There’s my mother.
Making false promises to avoid responsibility and any semblance of real emotion? That’s my papa to the tee.
The fact of that matter is that like the Brooklyn bridge we’re made of so many parts. Some borrowed and some kept. Still, like the child I was, I believed I could be different from the rest of humanity. That I could shed the sins of my mother and father and siblings. Start anew all on my own. As I looked out of the window towards the city lights, drunk on foolish thoughts, I set my sights on the war that was waged beyond.