Frozen Heart of a Child

I was born in Houston, Texas. There are no frozen ponds in Houston unless you count the ice rink at the Galleria. If you ever get the chance to go to the ice rink at the Houston Galleria around Christmas you should. My dad designed the hanging string lights. At least that is what he told me when I was little and I believed him. There is a Stromboli and the kids and their parents skate around and fall down and try to skate again; pretending they are on a real frozen pond and not in the middle of a mall, in a southern city with a winter that boasts 70 degree weather, with real ice and dangling lights creating an ambiance and semblance of another longitude.

I take a deep breath and let out a long sigh as I am not in Houston at the Galleria ice rink. I am nine years old and in Southern Illinois on a farm, surrounded snow, cold, frozen corn fields and the Amish. It is for real cold here and I am staring at a real frozen pond out the window. There are no ambiance string lights, no happy families pretending they know how to ice skate, no Stromboli. Just stuck in an old farmhouse with my mom, sister, new step-sister and new step-dad and my step-dad’s parents who are all trying to make nice and get along with their oldest son’s decision to divorce his wife and break up their family with their four year old daughter and marry my mother. I can tell they disapprove. I can feel it. They don’t dislike my mom, sister or me, but they are not pleased with their son and his choices. They don’t dislike us but they don’t like us either. And we are all stuck here together in this frozen tundra to make the best of it and get along.

I wish I had the guts or the gusto to reply to my new step-grandparents and say, hey, I did not ask for this either. They brought us here and we are all stuck in this farmhouse with our fake smiles and trying to make the best of it same as they are. I look out at the frozen pond from the patio. Water stuck in time, white, cold, waiting for a ray of sunshine, waiting for some warmth and summer and swimming and fishing and life and just to be unfrozen.

Even though I am nine years old I can feel the tension. I know what this trip is. It’s for my step-dad and mom to visit and pretend everything is great. It’s a smash over of their former lives, my sister and my former lives, and a half-hearted attempt of my mom and new step-dad presenting themselves in a functioning family fashion to his parents to get over it. To get over his former marriage and divorce and to accept his new wife and her two daughters even though his parents can tell he does not care for my sister and I much.

I watch them, my new step-grandparents. His dad is obvious military. Seamless walk, almost a glide, thinks before he speaks with little emotion. Firm, smart, deliberate and determined, with calculated responses and clears his throat before he speaks so that people pause to listen. From a long line of farmers and a proud heritage, I respect him and fear him from the first moment I meet him.

His mom is absolutely stunning with grace, wisdom, patience and beauty radiating from every move made and word spoken. My mom’s mom was completely opposite and I stared at her and compared the two as a child does. My mom’s mom was old German. Firm, strong, beautiful, watchful and aggressive, my grandmother was completely different than this woman. They both moved fluidly and with grace, but my new step-grandmother seemed to welcome a room with patience and observation, while my grandmother would walk into a room and command it. I found it very interesting for a nine year old, as I had never seen different strengths like that in two different women. The new woman had kind and wise eyes compared to the fierce and smart eyes of my grandmother I was used to staring into.

Why were we even here? The only thing to do is read books, work on puzzles and gaze out the patio windows at the frozen pond. They asked me questions about myself and I answered with short answers. They talked about their long genealogy and relatives and I did not care. My family had been broken apart to pieces. I did not care about theirs and its longevity. I did not care about how their cousins were doing and my new-step dads other relatives they went on and on about. I just wanted to go home. I just wanted things to be unfrozen. I just wanted the summer and the sunshine to return to my life. I wanted to go back to Houston and the ice rink at the galleria where the kids and their parents skated around the rink and their families were not torn apart to be rebuilt. I wanted to get away from the real frozen pond. I wanted to get away from the frozen time warp, condensing looks, fake talk and smiles. I wanted life to be normal again.

What use is a pond if it’s frozen? What use is a frozen pond when you are nine and staring out a window at a scene from a life you cannot change? You look inside and see a new life that is cold and unpleasant. Staring at a new family that you don’t want to be in and hoping for everyone’s heart to thaw and to feel some warmth instead of just cold distance and fakeness. Why did my dad leave me and why did my parents divorce and my mom marry someone else. Why am I so far away from home in this cold place with cold people? I can feel the anger and sadness washing over me and freezing my heart like the frozen pond outside. Was it my fault? Why did we have to move and leave my friends and my school? Why is the pond frozen? Will it ever thaw and show life again? Will summer ever come? Will this trip ever end?