The Adventures of a Broken Child - Chapter 12

The Cave

If you’ve come this far, you're probably curious how I found myself in that isolated and sickly state in the first chapter.  Memories don’t always play by the rules of time.  I hope to tell this story non-linearly, from the past to the present and from the present to the past, with the occasional detour to the side. If I do it well, all these narrative threads will eventually weave together something where you understand more than just telling the story from start to finish.  

Symbolically, a cave can be many things.  Bears spend their winters in caves.  Monsters and demigods live in caves.  Polythemus lived in a cave where he trapped Odysseus and his men.  A cave can be a refuge.  Ancient people lived in caves to avoid the dangers outside.  A cave can be a passage.  Seeking a passage to the underworld to save the only thing he loves, Orpheus finds Charon’s Cave, Charonium, and uses it to cross between worlds.  A cave can be a place to store riches.  Smaug hides his hoard of gold in a cave inside a mountain.  Aladdin finds the magic lamp in a cave.  Caves can be a place of birth.  Merlin was born in a cave.  It was in a cave that he discovered magic.  At the end of his life, his weakness and his passion led him back to the same cave, where he was enslaved and imprisoned.  After the crucifixion, Jesus was interred in a cave, where he was reborn.

There came a time when I gave up on writing and working in theater or film and opened a small business importing collectible figures from Asia and distributing them in the United States through the Internet.  I’ve always liked building and painting models; some amazing products came from Asian factories.  It wasn’t that different from what I was doing for my father.  Marketing is marketing.

Before moving to Los Angeles permanently, I intended to stop at Millsaps to work and study with Lance Goss in the theater department for just one year.  Lance became sick and then died.  My one-year hiatus at Millsaps turned into almost five, as I was determined to see the school through the transition to a new department with a new department chair.  Fate had other plans.

Instead of appointing Brent Lefavor, the theater history and stagecraft professor, as the new head of the department, the school played a shell game with the theater department for a few years before abdicating the entire concept and putting the major in abeyance.  I wasn’t responsible for this, but I felt responsible for it.

I took a wife. I probably won’t say too much about that because I don’t think it’s fair for me to tell her story. When people talk about relationships that didn’t last, there’s a tendency for the reader to take sides and often a tendency for the storyteller to make themselves look better than they actually were.  To avoid all that, I’ll simply say that I did love her and still believe in her.  Her happiness was more important than mine, but I didn’t know how to accomplish that either.  

My import business went very well for a while. I kept it intentionally small because I didn’t want to get caught up in the desperate cycle of constant expansion like my father did. I wanted to make enough money to pay my bills and occupy my time.  

The Clarion-Ledger once published a half-page article about my father titled: “Missco Succeeds at Growing.”  Bob Hearin, who made a considerable fortune in banking and other businesses, once told my father that if a business wasn’t growing, it was dying.  My father took that to heart.  He obsessively collected sales projection data from each of his managers and pressured them to meet and expand those goals.  

My father’s death wounded me.  I was wounded from not transplanting myself from Mississippi to California as I had planned.  I considered the collapse of the theater department at Millsaps my fault because I failed to prevent it, and that wound was still leaking.  I hoped to survive with my small business and my small wife and sail along quietly until I died before my time, as my father had.  My dream for a creative life would have to be led by somebody else.

There came a time when I looked around me and realized my mother was slowly losing the ability to breathe owing to her COPD.  My brother Jimmy had a baseball-sized tumor in his lung, and my quiet marriage to my quiet wife was failing faster and faster.  I could tell what was coming and that these things were most likely going to end nearly simultaneously. I knew there was almost nothing I could do about it.

I told my mother my marriage was ending.  A few weeks later, she surprised me by announcing that she had changed her will and made it so that my entire inheritance would go into a trust, so my wife couldn’t get any of it.  I found this incredibly hurtful.  Not just because of what it suggested she thought of me, it also suggested that she harbored ill feelings about my wife that she’d never told me about.  Worst of all, she hadn’t asked me about any of it before doing it.  I deeply resented her and anyone involved in that decision for years afterward.  Our relationship had been deeply strained for years.  In those months just before she died, it was utterly broken.

In about fourteen months, my mother died, my brother died, and I signed my divorce papers. I lost all motivation in life. I quit socializing altogether. I began working less and less. When the stock market crashed, I went five days without a single new order, so I decided to shut down my business, sell off the stock, and give away the equipment.

I returned to my home on the Pearl River Reservoir, sat in a chair, turned out the lights, covered myself in a blanket, and waited to die.  I told myself and my family that I had plans to rally and start something new, but truthfully, there were none.

I developed an infection and spent three days in the hospital.  In the hospital, I talked it over with my sister, who was very concerned that I wasn’t involved in life anymore.  We decided that I should sell my home on the reservoir and move into an office building downtown that had recently been converted into luxury apartments.  

My right leg had never fully recovered from an accident years before, so I thought about getting an electric mobility scooter to help me get around downtown and use that to engage with the world again.  I didn’t consider that once you start using one of those, it becomes very easy to depend on them entirely and get less and less exercise.

There, in my art deco tower, living in a part of town I always loved, I had intentions of finding a way to engage with the world again, but I soon found myself seeking spaces deeper and deeper in this new cave. Eventually, I rolled a stone over the door and hid myself away from the world for more than a decade.

If you’ve come this far, you're probably curious how I found myself in that isolated and sickly state in the first chapter.  Memories don’t always play by the rules of time.  I hope to tell this story non-linearly, from the past to the present and from the present to the past, with the occasional detour to the side. If I do it well, all these narrative threads will eventually weave together something where you understand more than just telling the story from start to finish.  

Symbolically, a cave can be many things.  Bears spend their winters in caves.  Monsters and demigods live in caves.  Polythemus lived in a cave where he trapped Odysseus and his men.  A cave can be a refuge.  Ancient people lived in caves to avoid the dangers outside.  A cave can be a passage.  Seeking a passage to the underworld to save the only thing he loves, Orpheus finds Charon’s Cave, Charonium, and uses it to cross between worlds.  A cave can be a place to store riches.  Smaug hides his hoard of gold in a cave inside a mountain.  Aladdin finds the magic lamp in a cave.  Caves can be a place of birth.  Merlin was born in a cave.  It was in a cave that he discovered magic.  At the end of his life, his weakness and his passion led him back to the same cave, where he was enslaved and imprisoned.  After the crucifixion, Jesus was interred in a cave, where he was reborn.

There came a time when I gave up on writing and working in theater or film and opened a small business importing collectible figures from Asia and distributing them in the United States through the Internet.  I’ve always liked building and painting models; some amazing products came from Asian factories.  It wasn’t that different from what I was doing for my father.  Marketing is marketing.

Before moving to Los Angeles permanently, I intended to stop at Millsaps to work and study with Lance Goss in the theater department for just one year.  Lance became sick and then died.  My one-year hiatus at Millsaps turned into almost five, as I was determined to see the school through the transition to a new department with a new department chair.  Fate had other plans.

Instead of appointing Brent Lefavor, the theater history and stagecraft professor, as the new head of the department, the school played a shell game with the theater department for a few years before abdicating the entire concept and putting the major in abeyance.  I wasn’t responsible for this, but I felt responsible for it.

I took a wife. I probably won’t say too much about that because I don’t think it’s fair for me to tell her story. When people talk about relationships that didn’t last, there’s a tendency for the reader to take sides and often a tendency for the storyteller to make themselves look better than they actually were.  To avoid all that, I’ll simply say that I did love her and still believe in her.  Her happiness was more important than mine, but I didn’t know how to accomplish that either.  

My import business went very well for a while. I kept it intentionally small because I didn’t want to get caught up in the desperate cycle of constant expansion like my father did. I wanted to make enough money to pay my bills and occupy my time.  

The Clarion-Ledger once published a half-page article about my father titled: “Missco Succeeds at Growing.”  Bob Hearin, who made a considerable fortune in banking and other businesses, once told my father that if a business wasn’t growing, it was dying.  My father took that to heart.  He obsessively collected sales projection data from each of his managers and pressured them to meet and expand those goals.  

My father’s death wounded me.  I was wounded from not transplanting myself from Mississippi to California as I had planned.  I considered the collapse of the theater department at Millsaps my fault because I failed to prevent it, and that wound was still leaking.  I hoped to survive with my small business and my small wife and sail along quietly until I died before my time, as my father had.  My dream for a creative life would have to be led by somebody else.

There came a time when I looked around me and realized my mother was slowly losing the ability to breathe owing to her COPD.  My brother Jimmy had a baseball-sized tumor in his lung, and my quiet marriage to my quiet wife was failing faster and faster.  I could tell what was coming and that these things were most likely going to end nearly simultaneously. I knew there was almost nothing I could do about it.

I told my mother my marriage was ending.  A few weeks later, she surprised me by announcing that she had changed her will and made it so that my entire inheritance would go into a trust, so my wife couldn’t get any of it.  I found this incredibly hurtful.  Not just because of what it suggested she thought of me, it also suggested that she harbored ill feelings about my wife that she’d never told me about.  Worst of all, she hadn’t asked me about any of it before doing it.  I deeply resented her and anyone involved in that decision for years afterward.  Our relationship had been deeply strained for years.  In those months just before she died, it was utterly broken.

In about fourteen months, my mother died, my brother died, and I signed my divorce papers. I lost all motivation in life. I quit socializing altogether. I began working less and less. When the stock market crashed, I went five days without a single new order, so I decided to shut down my business, sell off the stock, and give away the equipment.

I returned to my home on the Pearl River Reservoir, sat in a chair, turned out the lights, covered myself in a blanket, and waited to die.  I told myself and my family that I had plans to rally and start something new, but truthfully, there were none.

I developed an infection and spent three days in the hospital.  In the hospital, I talked it over with my sister, who was very concerned that I wasn’t involved in life anymore.  We decided that I should sell my home on the reservoir and move into an office building downtown that had recently been converted into luxury apartments.  

My right leg had never fully recovered from an accident years before, so I thought about getting an electric mobility scooter to help me get around downtown and use that to engage with the world again.  I didn’t consider that once you start using one of those, it becomes very easy to depend on them entirely and get less and less exercise.

There, in my art deco tower, living in a part of town I always loved, I had intentions of finding a way to engage with the world again, but I soon found myself seeking spaces deeper and deeper in this new cave. Eventually, I rolled a stone over the door and hid myself away from the world for more than a decade.

If you’ve come this far, you're probably curious how I found myself in that isolated and sickly state in the first chapter.  Memories don’t always play by the rules of time.  I hope to tell this story non-linearly, from the past to the present and from the present to the past, with the occasional detour to the side. If I do it well, all these narrative threads will eventually weave together something where you understand more than just telling the story from start to finish.  

Symbolically, a cave can be many things.  Bears spend their winters in caves.  Monsters and demigods live in caves.  Polythemus lived in a cave where he trapped Odysseus and his men.  A cave can be a refuge.  Ancient people lived in caves to avoid the dangers outside.  A cave can be a passage.  Seeking a passage to the underworld to save the only thing he loves, Orpheus finds Charon’s Cave, Charonium, and uses it to cross between worlds.  A cave can be a place to store riches.  Smaug hides his hoard of gold in a cave inside a mountain.  Aladdin finds the magic lamp in a cave.  Caves can be a place of birth.  Merlin was born in a cave.  It was in a cave that he discovered magic.  At the end of his life, his weakness and his passion led him back to the same cave, where he was enslaved and imprisoned.  After the crucifixion, Jesus was interred in a cave, where he was reborn.

There came a time when I gave up on writing and working in theater or film and opened a small business importing collectible figures from Asia and distributing them in the United States through the Internet.  I’ve always liked building and painting models; some amazing products came from Asian factories.  It wasn’t that different from what I was doing for my father.  Marketing is marketing.

Before moving to Los Angeles permanently, I intended to stop at Millsaps to work and study with Lance Goss in the theater department for just one year.  Lance became sick and then died.  My one-year hiatus at Millsaps turned into almost five, as I was determined to see the school through the transition to a new department with a new department chair.  Fate had other plans.

Instead of appointing Brent Lefavor, the theater history and stagecraft professor, as the new head of the department, the school played a shell game with the theater department for a few years before abdicating the entire concept and putting the major in abeyance.  I wasn’t responsible for this, but I felt responsible for it.

I took a wife. I probably won’t say too much about that because I don’t think it’s fair for me to tell her story. When people talk about relationships that didn’t last, there’s a tendency for the reader to take sides and often a tendency for the storyteller to make themselves look better than they actually were.  To avoid all that, I’ll simply say that I did love her and still believe in her.  Her happiness was more important than mine, but I didn’t know how to accomplish that either.  

My import business went very well for a while. I kept it intentionally small because I didn’t want to get caught up in the desperate cycle of constant expansion like my father did. I wanted to make enough money to pay my bills and occupy my time.  

The Clarion-Ledger once published a half-page article about my father titled: “Missco Succeeds at Growing.”  Bob Hearin, who made a considerable fortune in banking and other businesses, once told my father that if a business wasn’t growing, it was dying.  My father took that to heart.  He obsessively collected sales projection data from each of his managers and pressured them to meet and expand those goals.  

My father’s death wounded me.  I was wounded from not transplanting myself from Mississippi to California as I had planned.  I considered the collapse of the theater department at Millsaps my fault because I failed to prevent it, and that wound was still leaking.  I hoped to survive with my small business and my small wife and sail along quietly until I died before my time, as my father had.  My dream for a creative life would have to be led by somebody else.

There came a time when I looked around me and realized my mother was slowly losing the ability to breathe owing to her COPD.  My brother Jimmy had a baseball-sized tumor in his lung, and my quiet marriage to my quiet wife was failing faster and faster.  I could tell what was coming and that these things were most likely going to end nearly simultaneously. I knew there was almost nothing I could do about it.

I told my mother my marriage was ending.  A few weeks later, she surprised me by announcing that she had changed her will and made it so that my entire inheritance would go into a trust, so my wife couldn’t get any of it.  I found this incredibly hurtful.  Not just because of what it suggested she thought of me, it also suggested that she harbored ill feelings about my wife that she’d never told me about.  Worst of all, she hadn’t asked me about any of it before doing it.  I deeply resented her and anyone involved in that decision for years afterward.  Our relationship had been deeply strained for years.  In those months just before she died, it was utterly broken.

In about fourteen months, my mother died, my brother died, and I signed my divorce papers. I lost all motivation in life. I quit socializing altogether. I began working less and less. When the stock market crashed, I went five days without a single new order, so I decided to shut down my business, sell off the stock, and give away the equipment.

I returned to my home on the Pearl River Reservoir, sat in a chair, turned out the lights, covered myself in a blanket, and waited to die.  I told myself and my family that I had plans to rally and start something new, but truthfully, there were none.

I developed an infection and spent three days in the hospital.  In the hospital, I talked it over with my sister, who was very concerned that I wasn’t involved in life anymore.  We decided that I should sell my home on the reservoir and move into an office building downtown that had recently been converted into luxury apartments.  

My right leg had never fully recovered from an accident years before, so I thought about getting an electric mobility scooter to help me get around downtown and use that to engage with the world again.  I didn’t consider that once you start using one of those, it becomes very easy to depend on them entirely and get less and less exercise.

There, in my art deco tower, living in a part of town I always loved, I had intentions of finding a way to engage with the world again, but I soon found myself seeking spaces deeper and deeper in this new cave. Eventually, I rolled a stone over the door and hid myself away from the world for more than a decade.