Runaway

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I FIRST RAN AWAY when I was — oh, I must have been about ten or eleven. It was after my first younger sister was born but before my second one was. The sister was finally sleeping through the night but my mother and her new husband were not — instead they were having what the novels I would later love characterize as "rows." I left the apartment and spent the night across the street in the 24-hour laundromat. The dryers rumbled. The lights were bright and no one bothered me as I tucked myself away in a linty corner. It was my protest against poor parenting and drunken all-night brawls. My mother did not notice. I returned at dawn, before the baby woke up, made breakfast, and got myself off to school.

Five years later, I ran away again, this time to a runaway shelter, which fed me and made sure I got to school and to the local police department, where the officers duly took photos of my bruises and took down my sad story. My mother showed up for counseling sessions at the shelter and even I was impressed by her. I went back home, leaving behind a plaid flannel shirt for a girl who needed it more than I did.

Two months later, I left again, never to go back, pedaling away one night on my lime green ten-speed bicycle. No one came looking.

Since then I have tried to not run, epecially since I come from a family of runners. I recognize irresponsibility, recklessness, the selfishness — and worry I have it too. My father ran away as did my mother and my sisters, though my siblings were mostly taken by young husbands or the state.


Then, last week, I ran away, although, since I had my sweetheart and son in tow, I don't know if it really qualifies. There was something solitary in the other escapes. This one was different. For example, from the outset, returning was a given. But then again, there was the irresponsibility too — the recklessness, selfishness. I left behind things undone, ill friends, ailing family, dishes in the sink, laundry piled in baskets and a broken computer that seemed to underline the general brokenness of everything else, or so it seemed at the time. Broken hearts, bodies, world, the sad anniversaries of loss.

Where I went, too, was broken, albeit beautiful. ("Albeit" — another word from those novels!) It helped to understand that again.

So I am back. My computer is still broken. I'm using someone else's. It works; mine doesn't. That's okay. It has to be.

I will work harder to do what I should with what I have.


The wee birdies sing and the wild flowers spring
And the sunshine and waters are sleeping
The broken heart it kens, no second spring again
And the world does not know how we're greeting!

—The Bonnie, Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond