Beech Tree News Network

COME AND FIND ME

I am sure that just about everyone reading this column has, at one point or another, played a game known as “hide and seek” hardly anyone gets through childhood without becoming familiar with it and if childhood is now past but children are still in your life, then you have probably been involved in teaching this game to them. Everyone enjoys a good game of hide and seek, once and a while, or even perhaps frequently, don't they? Now, when I was young, my cousins and other family members had a couple of variations of this game, depending on which side of the family you were playing with. In either version if you made it back to the starting point before the one doing the “seeking” discovered your hiding place, then you were, “home free!” On one side it was fine if the seeker saw you before you reached the safe spot as long as you out ran them back to that spot. On the other side, you could not be seen at all, before reaching that spot or you were “caught.”

I have to conclude, looking back on it, that I preferred the version where you could not be seen at all before getting “home safe” because that version tested your strategy where as the other one basically just became a foot race with no cleverness involved. I remember playing hide and seek with my own children when they were very young. I taught them the version where you can not be seen at all by the seeker but before their hiding skills became comparable to my own, I would often pretend I had no idea where they had secluded themselves at, until I heard giggles escaping, which undeniably betrayed their position, I don't think I'm alone in this practice, am I? Getting “home safe” seems to come up in a lot of different games, competitions and strategies that most of us are involved in as we pass through childhood, adolescence and adulthood, now doesn't it? The difference being the schemes involved and put in place, to get us there.

Now that my children are a bit older, games like hide and seek have been left behind. It is a different type of being “home safe” that concerns me now. With both of my children driving now, like every parent, I worry until they are back home with their family, where they are shielded and secure. Whenever a parent hears a siren, while their child is on the road, you can not help but feel a twinge of nervousness until you ensure that they are alright.

To be in familiar surroundings where we feel safe, comforted and protected, is a deep desire in the souls of almost every one of us. Not long ago I was watching a show where some troubled young ladies where coming up missing from an institution. The twist came when the viewers were let in on the fact that all these young ladies were actually one person suffering from “multiple personality disorder.” The ones missing were actually different personalities being slowly discarded. I believe most of us have multiple personalities, the difference being we integrate and remember them. The disorder comes from dissociating and forgetting who we are and what we have done.

Now, unless you have an eidetic (photographic) memory, all of us have forgotten things, some of us on a regular basis but it is rare that whole blocks of time can go by while you are conscious and you have absolutely no recollection of them. Watching that show reminded me of a time in my own life when just such an occurrence did happen. I have no idea what brought it on or if I could have prevented it in any way but a while back, several days completely vanished from my memory. My wife says I was acting “strange” for a few days prior to my behavior becoming so erratic an ambulance was called, apparently I suffered a seizure in route to the hospital, they tell me I even became violent for a while after arriving at the hospital. I recall none of it, I just remember slowly coming out of a fog, in what turned out to be, several days later than my last cognitive memory. It never happened before and has not reoccurred since, I hope it never does, it was a scary situation for my family.

It is funny how your own mind can betray you, lost in an area unfamiliar and without comfort. That is the definition of being lost, unable to find one's way; not knowing one's whereabouts. There is an old hymn which has a line that says “I was lost but now I'm found!” I hate the way most people define being lost in situations similar to this hymn, as in getting “fire insurance” for after death means you are not lost anymore. I prefer the notion of finding a way, to comfort and protection, as the “found” we all long for. 

WILL YOU FIND ME?

If I lose my way along my journey will you come and find me?

Will you reach out to the part of the soul, which searches vainly?

Will you look deep, for the scared child, masked in bravado or subterfuge? 

When blackness threatens to overwhelmand perceived isolation, suffocates;when fear invades my home, please! come and find me. 

When I showed vulnerability did it make me weak?

Do I stand alone? Or are you by my side?