I try to remember a Christmas tree. My older sister tells me there was a tree in the corner of the living room of our old farmhouse, but I still have no memories of it — a defensive mechanism, forgetting, like beating a hornet from your face.

I remember very little from my childhood on the “farm”.

It wasn’t a typical farm with cows or crops. It was a horse farm created by a man who had gone through severe childhood trauma himself.

His mother left him when his father lost his job. He was 12. After a year of him sleeping on the sofa of a one-bedroom apartment, his father decided he’d rather live a life with a woman he’d met playing cards with at the nightly gathering of the neighbors upstairs. He didn’t want to be a dad anymore. He sent the young boy to his aunts in Brooklyn. What saved him was his summer camp trips, where he discovered the unconditional love he could receive from horses.

That love may have saved his childhood, but it destroyed mine

The 2nd world War broke out when he worked in a Kodak factory in Germany. The installation of an aircraft gun on the neighboring building gave him reason to come back to the States. They tested young draftees and told him he should become a Doctor. They needed doctors, and he was a smart man. He met my mother, a nurse, and bought an old farm in Central New York.

The land was vast, 50 acres of scenic land overlooking a valley with pine forests, green pastures, and a deep creek dividing the land in half. Shale went up the steep sides of the ravine, and you could walk along the cold stream and search for fossils. I spent as much time as possible in the back of our farm. It was a perfect place to hide.

That was the trick, vanishing when you needed to perform all your chores daily, regardless. But I was smart too.

I was the youngest; my sister was three years older, and my brother was four. My position saved me from receiving the biggest verbal lashings from our father.

My father worked for the city school district helping young children. They would misbehave or become violent, and they would call my highly respected and revered father to come in and help these poor children. Talk with them, listen to their problems, and recommend treatment or disciplinary actions.

He never worked in the summer, and the school district didn’t pay well. My mother would have preferred to wait but started teaching nursing at the university within a few years. He began buying horses quickly, and soon, the barn was full.

We were hemorrhaging money, and the pressure of raising so many horses pounded down on our family quickly.

We had very little food. My siblings and I would try to catch the milk truck to ask for cottage cheese, butter, or the best prize, chocolate milk, if he had it. We’d make a dessert called “sugar and butter stuff.” It was softened butter with sugar and, if available, vanilla extract. We’d whip it up and eat it with a spoon. It was delicious.

When I heard my father leave for the barn, I would sneak into his bedroom, which had a window overlooking the side yard. I could watch him walk up to the barn, so I knew I was safe to search for goodies. He often bought cookies and salty crackers with seeds or chocolate pieces and hid them in his bedroom.

In the kitchen, the cockroaches would look for food too. Opening the cabinets at night, you would jump at the surprise, even though you’d expect them. They’d scatter onto the counter and over the floor into cracks in the old wood.

Later, we discovered the only sure way to get rid of cockroaches.

I’ve tried to recall meals at home. There was a dining room table by the front door. I was the one interested in cooking. I learned how to make biscuits from white flour, baking soda, and a bit of water. My mother would make currant jam if I would pick the currants.

I was determined not to starve.

Family therapists don’t talk about neglect much. It’s mostly about parents that are hooked on meth or beat their kids. But there is so much danger for a child when no one is watching, especially when they leave home to go to school.

I rode the bus to the local rural school for kindergarten and 1st grade. My father moved me every two years; he liked experimenting to see how I’d survive. He’d work in a school with a new experimental teaching curriculum and transfer me: a racially diverse inner-city school, a private upper-class district, and even a Catholic school. Without discussion, I’d be in a different school. Far away from any connections to my previous.

Every school had a bus route with a stop that we would discover. Dropping me there would mean not having to bring me to school every morning. Without consideration, my father would leave me on a corner of an unfamiliar neighborhood in hopes I’d get public transport to school.

The sexual assaults started very early, mostly happening on buses.

My first memories of the bus ride to my local school still resurface without warning, causing tears to blur my vision.

I must have been four years old. With an October birthday, my parents had the option of holding me back, but that would mean someone would need to be home, so that made the decision easy.

I was in the back of the bus, and it was a long ride. The bus had to go great distances to pick up the farmer’s kids scattered throughout this large rural district.

Was I brought to the back, or did I want to return there daily? I don’t know.

But I remember sitting away from the driver, though back then, drivers didn’t look for trouble.

I would sit on the red cushioned vinyl seat and the boys would surround me from all sides. Peering over the bench in front and sitting very close to me.

I wore a dress to school, from my memories. It was pretty, I thought, lace at the edges. The boy next to me would lift my dress to expose my underpants. Then, while holding up my skirt, the boy on the other side of me would pull down my panties, exposing my hairless vulva.

They wanted to see what was inside. The boy would fondle me so that the boys could inspect my modestly developed vaginal opening and clitoris.

I remember fingers on me but I don’t recall my emotions after being invaded.

Honestly, I may have felt excitement that I had something that interested them. That was a new feeling. I was getting attention. Was my young psyche already damaged? After all, how should I have reacted?

I also felt shame. Didn’t the boys like what they discovered? Little girls genitals are delicate, like blooming petals on spring bulbs, but maybe these boys didn’t think so. Perhaps they were disgusted by what they saw. Regardless, these events set a core belief in me—a feeling of worthlessness and hatred toward my own sexuality.

That would explain the bizarre and dangerous behavioral traits I developed as a naive girl. Such behaviors went undetected by all the adults around me. Any one of them could have intervened. It could have helped me deal with these feelings, which worsened and became the emotional foundation of who I became in my adolescent years.

The worst offenders were parents who had their attention on more critical activities demanded upon them. Activities they created themselves and worsened as the farm livestock grew. They believed the farm was all that children needed. For a happy, fulfilled childhood. What else could they possibly need?

To be continued…