To Be Loved: "You're Not Going to School Today"

Like so many trauma stories, mine begins not with a catastrophic event but rather with a harmful idea: that I was somehow abnormal and needed to be fixed. The idea was introduced when, at age six, my parents began taking me for weekly sessions with a psychiatrist. Back then, taking a child to therapy wasn’t aimed at helping the child learn to thrive or work through a difficult experience. Rather, it was intended to change something about them—a behavior or a character trait that parents found challenging, that made people uncomfortable, that didn’t match what society deemed “normal.” None of this was explained to me; instead, the secrecy surrounding these visits only emphasized their shameful implication. This unnamable shame became part of the foundation of how I understood myself, a lesson that would take me the better part of a lifetime to unlearn.

I was six years old when I learned there was something seriously "wrong" with me. Even though it happened more than 50 years ago, I can still see where I was when it happened, as vividly as a Polaroid snapshot: the carpeted hallway from my bedroom to my parents’ room, the king-sized bed that swallowed up most of the room, the two dressers that occupied the remainder of the space: Dad’s against the far wall, tall and narrow, with a wooden box on top that held his cufflinks, Mom’s at the foot of the bed, its wide surface scattered with jewelry boxes, perfume bottles, and their framed wedding picture, all reflected in the big vanity mirror.

I was used to stumbling down this hallway in the mornings and climbing into my parents’ bed. Today, however, both my parents were awake already. My dad was perched on the edge of the bed in his Jockey underwear and “dago T” (as we used to call it). At his side was my mom in her lace-edged nightgown, propped up by pillows against the headboard. Though they’d called me in, they looked up when I entered the room as if I’d caught them in a secret conversation.

“You’re not going to school today, Frankie,” said my father.

For another kid, these words might have brought a moment of pure elation. For me, it was a disappointment; I loved my first-grade class. Moreover, being kept out of it was a clear signal that something strange was happening. Louis and Maggie weren’t the sort of parents to have me miss a day of school without a good reason.

It’s not the weekend. We’re not on summer vacation. I don’t feel sick.

“Why not?” I asked.

Their answer was more confusing than the announcement. “We’re taking you to a hospital downtown for some tests,” said my dad.

Missing school, visiting a hospital in the city rather than our local hospital, my parents’ secretive tone—all this could mean only one thing: I must be sick. Very sick.

***

My parents drove me to Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center, more than an hour away from our house in Oak Lawn, Illinois. The familiar surroundings of our tranquil midwestern suburb, all modest split-level homes like ours, fell away in the rear window as the road took us into the high-rise canyons of downtown Chicago.

The tests weren’t the kind one would expect at a big university Hospital. No bright lights, no stethoscopes, no blood work or X-rays. No explanation from my parents, either. I found myself alone in a stark white room with a stranger, trying to answer the questions he asked me while looking at a peculiar array of pictures: a woman gazing forlornly out a window, a little boy playing with a dog, a series of half-finished shapes, a collection of black-and-white blobs that made no sense to my eyes.

More mysterious than the pictures themselves was the purpose behind it all. I’d never been in a hospital room like this one, never heard of my friends being left alone with a stranger who asked questions like these, never encountered the kind of tone my parents had used in talking to me that morning or to the stranger afterward. Sensing that it wasn’t something they wanted to explain to me, I didn’t ask. But I could tell that whatever was wrong with me, the hospital visit hadn’t made it go away. Deep in the pit of my stomach, I felt what they wouldn’t tell me: There’s something in me that needs to be fixed. I’m clearly wrong somehow. Staring out the car window as the skyscrapers returned to split-levels and manicured lawns, I made my first attempt at what would become a lifelong practice: forget what just happened, suppress my feelings about it, and try my best to appear normal.

***

That visit set a new routine in place for the next six years. Every Tuesday night, I took a long car ride with one of my parents to a long, low building in the distant suburb of La Grange. Arriving there felt like pulling up to a motel—the entrance to the psychiatry office was one of several doors in the building, and we walked directly from the parking space into the waiting room. I remember reading Highlights magazine as I waited for my turn. I remember the big wooden desk in Dr. Dwight’s office, which he said was strictly off-limits. I remember two big chests of drawers against the wall and, beyond them, a white desk filled with art supplies.

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Dr. Dwight directed me to sit down at the desk and laid out sheets of white paper, crayons, and colored pencils. “Can you draw a picture of your family?” Dutifully, I sketched representations of my family—my mother, my father, my brother Ross, our dog Puggie. I liked to draw and, since he seemed impressed by my work, I added my red house with the front door, several windows, a chimney, and a big tree to the right. I hoped for more drawing assignments; instead, he proceeded to ask me questions about my family. I answered readily, wondering again what this was all about. Why does a doctor want to know about what color my dog is or what my house looks like or how I play with my brother?

Despite having no answers, I got used to the routine. Every Tuesday brought another long car ride, another “special meeting” that remained largely a blur. It wasn’t until several years later, when I was in the sixth grade, that Dr. Dwight asked me if I would like to play with some toys. He walked me over to the carpeted area and opened the chests of drawers. My eyes lit up at the things in the first chest—stuffed animals, ribbons and buttons, multicolored beads. But even as I reached for them, Dr. Dwight intervened.

“No, Frankie, we’re going to play with these toys.”

He gestured toward the other chest and instructed me to choose something I would enjoy playing with. I looked inside—construction trucks, the game Battleship, tiny plastic army men. Nothing interested me, but he sat and waited until I finally chose the army men. Dr. Dwight chose a plastic battleship. Together, we lined up the little green figures in rows and pretended to fight, knocking each other’s men down, and pushed the boat around the carpeting as if it were the sea, making motor noises with our mouths. Noticing that the tiny men would fall over if I pushed the boat too quickly, I was careful to make it cruise along slowly—if these were the “right” toys to play with, there was probably a right way to play with them.

No one ever asked me what had happened during the hour I spent with Dr. Dwight. Even if they had, I don’t know if I’d have been able to answer. I spent the long drive home each week finding other things to think about, things that helped me ignore the uneasy feeling, and the unnameable truth behind it. I got so good at ignoring my own questions that, by the time I got home, whatever happened in that day’s session had faded into mystery.

At the same time, I was learning, as children do, to see all of this—the violence, the suppression, the shame—as normal. It would be decades before I learned to call it trauma, and even longer before I learned that love could heal it.