Perfect Love - One Woman's Journey from Flesh to Faith: A Musical Memoir

By Shari Hall

God? I can’t feel him, touch him, see him, or hear him, so how can he be, and what could he ever want with me?” Illegitimate, poor, bi-racial in 1960s America – searching for an identity and unconditional love. As she recalls a childhood trauma and hair straightening “torture” sessions, we feel her heartache, pain, and sense of not being good enough. A critical choice leads her down a path of self-destruction as she denies her authentic self in search of wealth and worthiness. Fleeing to Australia, suffering a dysfunctional marriage, battling with alcohol, drugs, sugar, and relationships with all the wrong men, it’s a chance meeting with a long lost friend that is her saving grace. His belief in her music and God’s purpose for her life leads her on a path to salvation, devastating loss, and ultimately, Perfect Love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664150218

Shari Hall

Dr. Shari Hall is a happily retired cardiothoracic anesthesiologist educated at Yale University and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is an international recording artist and singer/songwriter with four albums to her credit—Perfect Love, Faith, Three, and her 2020 release Hope—as well as a motivational speaker for women’s conferences around the world. She has appeared on 60 Minutes, is a regular contributing author to the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, and has a TEDx talk providing the “one-ingredient solution” to combating the global obesity epidemic. Most importantly, she is a child of God and a mother. Originally from New York, she now permanently resides on the beautiful Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia. Shari Hall music can be heard on all streaming platforms. Connect with Shari on: Facebook and Instagram: @sharihalllife | LinkedIn: drsharihall | Twitter: @Shari_Hall | YouTube: sharihallmusic Visit www.sharihall.com.

Book preview

PERFECT LOVE

One Woman’s Journey

From Flesh to Faith

A Musical Memoir

Shari Hall

Copyright © 2021 by Shari Hall.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Cover design and photography: Cedar Noyes

Rev. date: 01/28/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

811589

CONTENTS

Disclaimer

BOOK I

Prologue

1 . I Am

2 . Mother and Fathers

3 . Love and Passion

4 . In the Flesh

5 . Me or Her

6 . The Choice

7 . Getting Educated

8 . Graduations

9 . Dazed and Confused

10 . Ultimatums

11 . Med School Life . . .

12 . . . . And Death

13 . Doctor-Singer

BOOK II

Promise Me

1 . Fight or Flight

2 . G’Day, Mate!

3 . Love and Assholes

4 . Promise Me

U And Me

1 . Good-bye and Hell-no!

2 . Mothers and Daughters, Son,

Husband, and Father

3 . Fear

Perfect Love

1 . Horrible Mother

2 . Eruptions

3 . Aloha ke akua

4 . Happy Family

5 . Hurricanes

6 . Answering the Call

7 . SNAFU

8 . Storms Down Under

9 . Death and Divorce

10 . Departures

Attention

1 . Exodus

2 . WRAMC

3 . Wounded Warriors

4 . Across the Sea

5 . Prison

6 . Attention

7 . Fireside Chat

BOOK III

Sensual Energy

1 . My Body

2 . Transformation

3 . Black Men

4 . Labels

5 . Deception

6 . Sensual Energy

Wild Side

1 . Juggler

2 . Gut Feeling

3 . Transfiguration

4 . Girls

5 . Rules of Engagement

6 . The Descent

7 . Absolution and Judgment

B Side

1 . Sorry, Babe

2 . History Repeats Itself

3 . Friends

BOOK IV

Chase

1 . The Tempter

2 . The Pursuit

3 . Mother

4 . Fractured

5 . Gain and Loss

6 . In a Dream

7 . Chase

Unconditionally

1 . Questions

2 . Home

3 . Lunch, Luxury, and Lust

4 . Ninety Days

5 . Maryland to Florida

6 . Maryland to New Jersey

7 . Goodbyes

8 . Unconditional Love

BOOK V

Heaven

1 . Recovery

2 . Reconnection and Reconsideration

3 . Relapse

4 . Rejection

All About Love

1 . The Apostle

2 . Holy Love Shack

3 . A Conversation about God

4 . Truth

5 . All about Love

Good Enough

1 . Counseling

2 . Let Go, Let It Go

3 . Decision

4 . Gone

5 . Limiting Beliefs

6 . Peace

7 . Faith

Epilogue

1 . Affirmations

2 . Three

Afterword

1 . A Life in Christ

Perfect Love is a triumphant story of looking for love in all the wrong places, and the sex/money/power lifestyle of a successful medical professional. This is a truly unique experience to read whilst also being able to listen to her story put to music, in essence, the soundtrack of her life woven through the pages. This story is not for the faint-hearted. It is raw, real and reveals the depths of despair that so many of us endure on this journey of life, and the consequences of our choices born from early childhood traumas. Ironically, the pursuit of a Doctorate in Anesthesiology, from an Ivy League school, didn’t numb her pain.

Showcasing her true gifts and talents as a singer, songwriter, musician and author, you will find a poignant selection of songs and their lyrics from her first album Perfect Love to her most recent release, Hope. You will be taken from depravity to divinity through the music in these albums which form the bookends of her life… so far.

Shari Hall has bared her soul and shame, and has laid it all down before us in the desire that those who have taken a similar path, can grasp the hope, the new life and the perfect love she has found in the forgiveness of her Savior, Jesus Christ.

—Julie Coulson

It takes an immeasurable amount of bravery to pour your heart and soul onto the pages of a book in the name of serving others. After reading Perfect Love, I can confidently say Shari Hall is one of the bravest women I know. By sharing her memoir with uncensored authenticity, she holds up a mirror to every person who reads this book. We can see all pieces of ourselves in Shari’s life. We can identify with the raw feelings of utter despair and pure ecstasy that Shari captures beautifully with poetic prowess through her writing and music. For this very reason, Perfect Love gives every one of us the permission to accept the very essence of who we are and to revel in the knowledge that we are loved, supported, and guided - whether we know it yet or not. This is a captivating and titillating memoir that cuts right to the core of who we are as people and shows us what awaits if we have the courage to strip back the exterior comforts of life and be true to our soul purpose.

—Roxanne McCarty-O’Kane

Shari Hall’s Perfect Love is a compelling memoir of a spiritual journey that is inspiring and full of hope. It is the story of a life filled with triumphs and pain that she has channeled into her music. Hall writes vividly and with an immediacy that heightens the reader’s understanding of her state of mind and emotions. Hers is a tale of strength and resilience that should be read by anyone feeling lost or stuck and seeking a path to greater meaning in their life.

—Paul S. Myers

A vulnerable, raw, painful, honest story of heartbreaks and despair, searching for love and acceptance. What is love? What does it mean or look like? And then encountering the one true love, which surpasses them all. I have known Shari for fifteen years as an honest, faithful, true, and loving friend. I’ve watched her journey over the years, and I am thrilled that she has finally experienced her true love and faith in Jesus.

—Theresa Seuili

I am speechless. All I can say is that I am so grateful to have this woman as my mother, teacher, and friend. With her love and this story, she has opened my eyes wider than they were before to the beauty and suffering of life. From my own experiences, I have related to this book and learned things I did not know before. This book is heart wrenching, godly, overwhelming, fun, sexy, beautiful, creative, and a work of art. You will not regret reading this book and listening to the music; you will feel things you’ve never felt before.

—Nicolette Noyes

What can I say? Amazing for so many reasons but mostly for the honesty and rawness. The relationship one has with themselves sets the tone for every other relationship they have. This is Shari Hall’s story in all its glory—a confronting, honest journey, one that may be easy to harshly judge or misconstrue as gratuitous. However, to know the woman behind the story is to know only love, kindness, passion, and enduring commitment to bring joy to everyone around her. What a triumphant achievement in self-growth, self-awareness, and self-love! From beginning to end, the heartache, the determination, and the desire for perfect love is a journey well worth taking.

—Sandi Forward

Through her words and music, Shari Hall manages to make us relive, alongside her, her long and difficult quest for an unconditional love—between the USA and Australia, medicine and music, hopes and disappointments—until she has a meeting that will change her life. This sincere, poignant, and addictive story is also a universal testimony of a woman of today—a mother, a daughter, a mistress, an artist, and a believer.

—Barbara Class

Shari reminds us the notion of ‘perfect love’ is not one for others to bestow upon us, but rather one we must work on and define for ourselves. In sharing her joys, heartbreaks, successes, pitfalls, self doubts and learnings, Shari shows us that we are indeed a sum of all parts and most powerful when we direct love inward.

—Rhiannon Yarrow

SHARI HALL MUSIC

image%201.jpg

Perfect Love (© 2013, Shari Hall, SCeNic/ASCAP)

All songs written by Shari Hall, except Attention and Heaven by Shari Hall and Paul Gordon and All About Love rap by Tyrone Noyes

Previously published by SCeNic Enterprises LLC

Executive Producer: Shari Hall, SCeNic Enterprises LLC

Producer: Paul Gordon

Recorded at Stayawake Music, Nashville, TN, USA

Mixed by Dexter Green, Sealab Sound, Nashville, TN, USA

Mastered by Marc Chevalier, Nashville, TN, USA

Photography: Ryan Prucker

IMAGE%202%20-%20FAITH%20Album%20Cover.PNG

Faith (© 2014, Shari Hall, SCeNic/ASCAP)

All songs written by Shari Hall, except In the Moment by Shari Hall and Paul Gordon and Because of You by Shari Hall, Paul Gordon, and Vita Dennis

Previously published by SCeNic Enterprises LLC

Executive Producer: Shari Hall, SCeNic Enterprises LLC

Producer: Paul Gordon

Recorded at Stayawake Music, Nashville, TN, USA

Mixed by Dexter Green, Sealab Sound, Nashville, TN, USA

Mastered by John Painter, Nashville, TN, USA

Photography: Cedar Noyes

IMAGE%203%20-%20THREE%20Album%20Cover.JPG

Three (© 2016, Shari Hall, SCeNic/ASCAP)

All songs written by Shari Hall, except Never Alone by Shari Hall and Russell Morgan

Previously published by SCeNic Enterprises LLC

Executive Producer: Shari Hall, SCeNic Enterprises LLC

Producers: Paul Gordon, Nathan Eshman

Recorded at Stayawake Music, Nashville, TN, USA, and Hillsong Studios, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Mixed by Dexter Green, Sealab Sound, Nashville, TN, USA, and Andrew Crawford, APC Productions, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Mastered by John Painter, Nashville, TN, USA

Photography: Cedar Noyes

IMAGE%204%20-%20HOPE%20Album%20Cover.JPG

Hope (© 2020, Shari Hall, SCeNic/ASCAP)

All songs written by Shari Hall, except High rap by Tyrone Noyes

Previously published by SCeNic Enterprises LLC

Executive Producer: Shari Hall, SCeNic Enterprises LLC

Producer: Greg Arnott

Recorded at Page One Studio, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Mixed and mastered by Andrew Crawford, APC Productions, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Photography: Cedar Noyes

Bible Verses

All Bible verses referenced are from the World English Bible¹, which is a public domain (no copyright) modern English translation of the Holy Bible. It is based on the American Standard Version of the Holy Bible, first published in 1901; the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Old Testament; and the Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text.

To Jesus, our walk together continues.

To my children, Cedar and Nikki, for their

unconditional love and support.

To the love of my life, Jens, for asking me to stay.

To all those who have stood by my side through it all.

And to anyone else who feels compelled to

share their story but is afraid.

DISCLAIMER

T HIS BOOK CONTAINS mature content . It is advised that the reader is at least eighteen years old and acknowledges that they agree to view mature content.

To the best of my ability, I have tried to recreate events, locales, and conversations from my journals and memories of them. Members of my family who were present at some of these events may have different interpretations of what happened and their recollection may differ from my own, even if the facts are not disputed. To protect privacy and provide anonymity, in some instances, I have changed names of people, places, or identifying characteristics, including physical properties, occupations, or places of residency.

I also caution the reader that this memoir contains graphic sexual scenes, which may produce powerful feelings and intensely clear images in your mind. I have made a deliberate and conscious decision to include this content because I believe it is essential in understanding my state of mind when these events occurred, as well as why and how I have come to be the woman I am today—a new creation in Christ.

IMAGE%205%20-%20SHARI%20HALL%20with%20Microphone.JPG

Photography: Ryan Prucker

To listen to Shari Hall music, scan the QR CODE next to each song lyric throughout the book. Shari Hall music is available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Google Play and several other streaming platforms. Physical CDs may be purchased from www.sharihall.com.

I

PROLOGUE

See how great a love the Father has given to us,

that we should be called children of God!

—1 John 3:1

1

I Am

I AM A CHILD of God. Christ is in me. With him, I am enough.

It has taken me more than half a century to be able to say these words out loud with unshakable faith, belief, and steadfast conviction, but everything in its right time. After all, it’s not my timing at all but his. Had I not been through the life I’ve lived thus far, had I not endured the pain, heartache, and struggles I’ve experienced to date, this book would never be. I could never share this story or the wisdom I’ve gained. I could never admit that it is by his will, his grace, his mercy, and his plan alone that I have been brought to you.

This is my testimony, my confession. This is my story, my personal journey from flesh to faith, from a worldly life to a spiritual one. I feel no need to explain, defend, or justify these words, for they are simply what they are—a telling of one woman’s story, mine, from a single perspective, mine. There is no deliberate intention to misrepresent, dramatize, or exaggerate anything contained herein. After all these years, it’s just the way I have remembered things. Yet I do feel a sense of urgency to get pen to paper and document the lessons I’ve learned. Don’t get me wrong. I have no sense of impending doom or an expectation of a premature, sudden ending of my life. It’s just that I can no longer ignore the calling I’ve heard to write it all down, get it all out, and confess. For without repentance, there can be no forgiveness nor redemption or salvation, and I am ready to be saved.

So why tell the story at all? I am no one significant. I haven’t created the next smartphone or established a worldwide humanitarian association. I am not the wealthiest person in the world, nor do I own vast possessions. I won’t consider myself as spiritually evolved as many of the leaders in this world, nor have I influenced millions of people to purchase a book by interviewing them on a television show. My accomplishments are many yet not out-of-this-world miraculous, for anyone could have done the things I have done and lived the not-so-exceptional life I have lived.

I suppose, though, that therein lies the intention behind sharing my story. I am just like you. We are connected. In our humanity and frailty, the temporariness of our existence as flesh, we want to know that we are not alone. We desire to be of some significance in this life, to realize our purpose, to know our time here is not meaningless and that we have done some good. While we may be a ball of electrons, energy, and space, we have a heart and a soul yearning to give and be loved.

Everyone has a story to tell. Some might even say we are compelled to tell it. The favorite subject of anyone I’ve ever met is usually themselves; I am no different. I love to talk about me. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say I am a conversational narcissist—one of those people who always bring the topic of conversation back to themselves, under the guise of empathy and compassion, when listening to the trials and tribulations of another human being. This is just one of my many sins, and there are many. I have been praised and encouraged by some and highly judged and discouraged by others for sharing my story. One of my closet friends even said to me, Why would you ever want to tell people about any of this? Some things are just better kept to yourself. It will change people’s opinion of you. It certainly has mine. And I don’t think she meant for the better.

Well, I’m good with that. I can now say that my life is no longer defined by the opinions and expectations of others; hence, whether you accept this story as truth or fiction, whether you give it a positive or negative review, whether you like or don’t like the content, or whether you come to love or despise the person I am, have been, or grow into within these pages matters not to me. I know I am loved. What does matter, though, is the message contained within. In fact, only one week before writing down these words, I emphatically stated to another one of my friends that my purpose has finally and definitively been revealed to me:

My purpose, my sole reason now for living, is to share the essence of who I am with the world through my stories and songs in an effort to bring each soul with whom I come in contact closer to God. I am an apostle of Christ.

That’s a powerful mission statement for someone who, forty years ago, was a self-professed atheist and hater of the word God. God? What or who is that? I can’t feel him, touch him, see him, or hear him, so how can he be, and what could he ever want with me? I am not the first person to have these thoughts and certainly will not be the last. But even through all the years of not knowing who he is, it seems he has always known who I am.

From the day I wrote my first song, he has been speaking to me and through me in the lyrics and music I have created. And I do say I have created because I now know the Creator is within me, and I am of him. I have always said I don’t write my songs; they come to me, usually in the middle of the night, fully written as if it were a download from above. And by above, I mean from God. I then find myself frantically trying to get the words written down, sometimes in an indecipherable manner, hardly able to read them the following morning. Then it’s usually a rush to my guitar or piano to painstakingly attempt to transfer the symphony being heard in my head into rudimentary chords and rhythms with accompanying hieroglyphics on a piece of paper—nothing any real composer could ever read. Such is the songwriting process of Shari Hall.

On June 25, 2013, I released my first studio album, Perfect Love. While it was not the original intention, I realized that each song I wrote told part of the story of my life from my marriage through the six years after my divorce and my journey into a spiritual life. Because songwriting has always been deeply personal for me, this musical memoir is my way of communicating to you the emotions and feelings coming from inside my heart and soul with all its complexity; simple words alone just aren’t enough. The songs are my truth—a truth I now feel compelled to share with you, a divine truth delivered to me with a message as old as time itself.

To enhance your understanding of the message, I ask that you read each song-titled section while simultaneously listening to the music and lyrics it inspired. There is a significant amount of overlap in the timing of some of the events described herein; however, these are the stories of the songs, not necessarily a chronological biography. It is my genuine hope and desire that by reading my personal journey from flesh to faith while listening to the songs, you will connect deeper with your own personal truth and experience the revelation that I have come to know, the source of Perfect Love.

My Perfect Love story begins long before the first

song on the album was ever written.

2

Mother and Fathers

For you formed my inmost being. You knit me together in my

mother’s womb. I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and

wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul knows

that very well. My frame wasn’t hidden from you, when I was

made in secret, woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes

saw my body. In your book they were all written, the days that

were ordained for me, when as yet there were none of them.

—Psalm 139:13–16

A T SIX YEARS old, growing up on the west side of Buffalo, New York, I attended a Catholic school. It was a big, multi-story yellow brick building, and every morning when I entered its doors, I was overcome with a sense of fear. The nuns believed in corporal punishment, and I often witnessed it in the classroom. The little boy who sat directly in front of me repeatedly had a ruler slapped on his knuckles for tapping his pencil on the desk. Yes, it was annoying and repetitive behavior (or an ARB as it was fondly called in my household when I had children of my own), but really? Another classmate was frequently called to the principal’s office for a vicious smack on the bum with a wooden paddle. Ouch! I suppose if any teacher, or parent for that matter, did that now, they’d be reported to child protective services, perhaps even by the child themselves, and possibly end up incarcerated. But in 1970, this was status quo.

The worst it ever got for me was a couple of confabulated stories in the dreaded confessional booth, listening to the mystery voice behind the metal screen in the black-walled chamber sentencing me to say three Hail Marys and five Our Fathers. Then my sins would be forgiven for having stolen a cookie from the cookie jar the day before—a lie I would make up to have something to actually confess to the priest. How messed up is that, right? Out of fear that the priest might report my lack of contrition to the sister, I felt compelled to fabricate a lie because what child knows they have sinned when they have? I’m sure I sinned often and regularly as a little kid, but when the time came to let it all out in that claustrophobic small dark cell of a confessional, I couldn’t remember a thing. Better to be safe than sorry and make something believable up. After all, I did love cookies.

God was anything but real or tangible through my child eyes. I certainly didn’t understand why I had to call him Father when I had a father of my own. Still, somehow I always felt his presence, always knew he was there. Each time I found myself kneeling in the pews to complete my penance, in the hallowed colossal halls of marble, surrounded by images of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus in stained glass windows that framed the cathedral, I felt he was real. I could feel it in the depths of my soul, with every beat of my heart, with each breath I drew into my lungs. How could any of this happen—how could I happen—without a God?

What I know for certain is that I have had four father figures in my life: Calvin, my biological father; Bruce, my mother’s first husband; my uncle Wayne, my mother’s elder brother; and my stepfather, Richard, my mother’s second husband.

My father was the eleventh of sixteen children born into the Hall family. Raised on the east side of Buffalo, the wrong side of the tracks, primarily by his mother, Sylvia, and elder sisters, he grew up during the Great Depression, in a life of poverty, violence, and music. His father, B-Jack, apparently wasn’t around very much but made a point of returning home from his escapades in philandering just in time to grab the government support check his mother received each month. He was not the ideal father figure, but I have been told that the Hall children, especially the boys, absolutely adored their mother. I never met my grandmother; she died in childbirth during her sixteenth labor. Calvin ended up enlisting in the army during the time of the Korean War and competing for them as a boxer. Ultimately, he became a Golden Gloves welterweight champion. When I knew him, he spent his days working as a peace officer (not to be confused with a police officer) for the public housing authority, patrolling the dilapidated projects of the east side. His nights he spent as the lead jazz guitarist in his band, Calvin Hall and the Highlighters.

Supposedly, the story goes like this. One night while performing at a nightclub, playing guitar in a shimmery silver suit with black velour lapels, he noticed a beautiful young white, blond bombshell and her friend sitting at the bar when they were approached by one of his brothers. Like a knight in shining armor coming to rescue a not-so-distressed maiden, he found his way between the two and wooed her as his own instead. Despite the reproaches of her critical, traditional mother (my grandmother), my mother, Kathleen, fell in love and had two children out of wedlock with this gorgeous black man—me and my sister.

At twenty-one, Kathy went from being a former high school cheerleading captain and John Robert Powers beauty school graduate to being pregnant and isolated from her family, living with a black man with a known history for loving the ladies. Yes, my father was dashingly handsome, magnetic, and charming, a typical Leo and perhaps an amazing lover, but he was ultimately unreliable and unfaithful. They were an unlikely couple in the year when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was introduced by Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, Malcom X led the black nationalist party, race riots in Philadelphia left hundreds injured and arrested, Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) won the world heavyweight boxing championship, and Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize. Four days before I was born, three members of the Congress of Racial Equality were murdered by the white knights of the Ku Klux Klan. On my birthday, June 25, 1964, the number one hit song on the United States of America Billboard Hot 100 was A World without Love by Peter and Gordon.

I can’t remember much more of the story between my mother and father. No one ever told me. He was in and out of our lives for more than a decade. But I have two photos of them together, both of which I cherish with all my heart, and I also remember some happy times living in the single-level flat on Putnam Place, near the Peace Bridge to Canada. My father came home daily from work, strapping on his classic Gibson guitar, sitting at the kitchen table in a ripped old white V-neck T-shirt that accentuated his well-defined biceps. He seemed to always be wearing his black fedora, even indoors. His small amplifier projected the sweet sounds of his guitar as he played from the sheet music spread across the table. He would play and I would sing Betcha by Golly Wow by the Stylistics or This Masquerade by George Benson while he intermittently took a drag from his unfiltered cigarette. I couldn’t stand the smell of the smoke, but I adored being so close to my dad.

Mom, looking like a beautiful porcelain doll with her coiffed hair and tiny waist cinched by a tight belt, would simultaneously be cooking a standard meat and potatoes dinner. The delicious aroma of gravy and onions wafted through the air, often having me calling out, Mom, is dinner ready yet? Our kitchen was a small room congested with a stove, refrigerator, sink, basic dingy off-white particle board cabinetry, and table for four in the center, standing atop the linoleum floor. There were doors to the dining room, to the back hallway that led to both the upstairs apartment and the basement, and to our bedroom, which saw an excessive amount of traffic since one could only enter the single bathroom of the flat through there. I loved these evenings in the kitchen—me, my family, and the music.

One night I heard my father come home late from the projects. When he worked there, he always wore a gun on his hip in a holster, a hidden ankle pistol, and a gun in a shoulder strap. Additionally, he had a billy club, which swung rhythmically at his side as he confidently strutted down the street, greeting every passerby; they all seemed to know Sergeant Hall. My sister and I were already fast asleep on this particular night. Mother seemed quite upset, and I could hear them talking quietly yet with tension in the bathroom inside our bedroom. It was cramped with a sink, a toilet, and a claw-foot tub with a shower nozzle.

Rubbing my tired eyes, I sneakily stepped out of my lower bunk bed and tentatively peered through the crack in the door. Mom was on her knees, leaning over the edge of the bathtub, filling it with hot, sudsy water, while my father was unbuttoning his bloodstained white shirt. I saw my mother take the soiled uniform and place it into the steaming bathwater, where instantly the color changed from an inviting soft, fluffy white to a frightening deep dark blood-red. I felt like I was in the middle of a horror movie. My mother saw me and immediately came to shuffle me back into my bed.

What happened, Mommy? Is Daddy all right? I asked, worried and tearful.

Yes, honey. Daddy is fine. He had to break up an argument with a man and a woman. But he is okay, she explained as best as she could. How does a mother explain domestic violence to a child?

Well, there were occasional episodes of corporal punishment in our own household. I recall the times when the back of a wooden paddle hairbrush or a leather belt would find my bottom, and more often than not, it had something to do with my sister and me arguing or fighting and me ending up the guilty party. I distinctly remember the time I took the thick Whitepages phone book and cut the pages up into pieces, like they did on the television game show Dialing for Dollars. There were hundreds of phone numbers strewn across the floor of the lounge room, and my sister and I sat on the floor amid the mess before my mother, who demanded a confession from the responsible child. By this time, I’d had enough of confessions; and internally, I refused to admit my wrongdoing. Kudos to my sister, who held strongly to her innocence; and well, by the end of evening, it was my bottom that was red and stinging.

My mother and father were on again, off again. How could they stay united? With forces all around them conspiring against their union, it’s a wonder I recall any happy times of them together at all. During one of their off times, Mom struggled alone with two nappy-headed, mixed children, surviving on welfare and food stamps, the pretty colorful books of coupons we called money. Working two jobs as a hairdresser and a secretary, I know my mother did the best she could given her circumstances and the social climate of the time.

These years of my life were divided between times with my white family and times with my black family. Visits to my white grandmother’s house were filled with wonderful memories of playing cards, going bowling, climbing trees in her suburban backyard, and creating dance performances to Osmond Brothers’ One Bad Apple with my cousins. We drank tea and enjoyed one-pan casseroles for dinner. While visits with my father’s family involved lots of fried chicken, BBQ wings, macaroni and cheese with cola, and running races through the inner city, singing on the porch to ABC by the Jackson 5, as well as the presence of dozens of family members from any one of the fifteen aunts and uncles on the black side of my family. This was our normal family life, something I later wrote about for my high school humanities class in an essay titled Poised Between Two Worlds.

I have only scattered memories of my early childhood with my father. Sometimes we were living together; sometimes we visited him at his apartment in another part of town. There was one occasion in particular that remains vivid in my mind. I was very young; at what exact age, I don’t recall. We were staying overnight at my father’s flat. Dad was out working or gigging at a club. My elder half brother, and his friend were watching over us that evening. It was a long rectangular apartment on the second floor, with an eat-in kitchen at one end, a main family room in the middle, and a long narrow hall with a bathroom and one master bedroom, my father’s room. I was going to sleep in his room, in the queen-size bed that, to this very day, remains in the family at my cousin’s home. This bed has always made noise when you jump into it, a creaking, squeaking sound that quiets down once you settle into the mattress and stop moving around. The headboard was wooden—maple, I believe—with two sliding doors that hid small storage cubicles suitable for books, magazines, or an alarm clock. I was lying on the left side of the bed.

Outside the window, attached to the building, there were flashing neon lights on a vertical sign that prevented me from getting to sleep quickly, but my sister was quietly breathing beside me, sound asleep. I did drift off to sleep eventually, only to awaken suddenly with the feeling of something heavy on top of me hindering my breathing. Startled and fearing I was suffocating, I opened my eyes briefly but immediately closed them again. I did not understand why there was a dark man’s body on top of me, why it was moving, and why I couldn’t get out from under him. There was an incessant pressure on the lower half of my body I could not explain. I opened my eyes again, in a dazed panic. Frozen, with a sense of helplessness, in a state of confusion, I closed my eyes again until the man disappeared. It was hot and wet between my legs, and I felt as if I had peed the bed.

At the time, I didn’t know if this was only just a dream, and I never found out who it was or uncovered any evidence apart from my memory if that ever really happened. I only know that when I awoke, he was gone, I was alive, and the next day was beginning; I never mentioned it to anyone.

This memory is as vivid today as it was then, and even now, if on the left side of the bed, my sleep is often restless, filled with repeated night sweats and startled awakenings. I don’t know where my brother, his friend, or my father slept that night in my dad’s apartment. I don’t even recall the following day.

Terry was several years older than Paula and me and was one of four sons (that I know of) my father had from relationships with women other than my mother. I looked up to him as a big brother, though I don’t believe he ever gave me any reason to. Like my father, Terry was a handsome musician and had a dynamic personality. That didn’t help prevent him from getting into trouble, and he eventually found himself in prison.

When he was released, at some time when my mother and father were actually living together, he visited us at our Putnam Place house. He stood in the doorway between the lounge room and the kitchen, laughed, smiled, gave us loving big hugs, and said how much he missed us while he was away. He wore a sparkling silver ring on a chain around his neck. It was shiny and glistening, and I wanted it. I pleaded, Terry, can I have that ring? It’s so pretty. I batted my eyelids and prayed before him with my hands firmly clasped together, shaking them, hoping the strength of my desire was enough to have that dazzling ring magically fly onto my finger.

Sorry, little darling. You’ll have to wait in line like all the other ladies. He smirked. I was hurt and saddened by the fact that I was not the only girl in my big brother’s life. But like father, like son (and like so many other men I would come to know in my life). Needless to say, Terry was no longer my idol.

Michael, another of my brothers from another mother, was killed in a bar after refusing to leave when the owner discovered he was drinking underage. They argued, the altercation became physical, and the owner pulled out a gun and shot him. Jesse, my stepbrother whom everyone called Butch, was the eldest. While he wasn’t actually my father’s son, Dad treated him the same as his other boys. Shortly after being released from prison, Butch was also killed, this time by a man who was sleeping with his girlfriend while he was incarcerated, or so I was told. I didn’t really know him at all.

Kevin, on the other hand, the youngest of my father’s children, six years my junior, is still a part of my life today. He’s a professional jazz saxophonist, and honestly, if he weren’t my half brother, he’d be just the guy for me—smart, handsome, talented, fun, and filled with love, joy, and righteousness in his heart. He also had children out of wedlock and a strained relationship with his ex and was estranged from his son and daughter for most of their childhood. I know he always wanted to be there for them, but the system and the woman kept him from doing so, or at least that was what he said. I think most children eventually come around, though, and as they age, they begin to understand how we, as parents, have done the best we could given the circumstances.

Whether my father was there or not, I only have fond memories of him. I think my father provided me with some of the best parts of who I am today—my musicality, my spirituality, and my sense of being unique and special with a God-given purpose in this universe. He had a fervent belief in God and the Holy Scripture and was often known to speak of the cosmic consciousness of the universe and the Dead Sea Scrolls, none of which I understood at the time. As far as I ever saw, Dad was the recipient of nothing but ill thoughts and venom from my mother after their final separation, perhaps for good reason. Despite that, he regularly inquired about her welfare and often asked if Kathy was doing all right.

There is no point in mentioning Bruce at length; I don’t remember him. My mother had this marriage annulled because, I was told, she discovered he was a bigamist.

My mother’s brother was an important part of our lives during my youth. My uncle was so fun and funny. One Halloween, he came bounding through the door with this very scary, very lifelike mask on his face, a giant feather in his hat, and the attire of a musketeer, complete with plastic sword and brazen red sash. Mom wore a sexy toreador costume with a large black bolero that had several pom-poms dangling from the brim, a black miniskirt, a long-sleeved billowy white silky button-down blouse, and a red sash as well. That night, he was taking us all out to a Parents without Partners Halloween party. My sister and I each put on one of our jazzy dance costumes from a previous recital and had a grand evening of candy, games, and fun with our cousins and other children of single-parent households.

We often found ourselves in my uncle’s care and usually with his own children, our three close cousins. The five of us were tight. The girls enjoyed singing, dancing, and choreographing show tunes for the adults to cheer on, while the solitary male child usually sat on the sideline, wondering what to do. On some days, it would just be my uncle, sister, and me. We’d sit in the back seat of his car, bouncing up and down, laughing, and playing (this is before the days of mandatory seat belts), while he would be shuttling us to and from the park. One day he stopped the car and turned around to us to say with loving yet sorrowful eyes, Don’t worry if people stare at us. They just don’t understand.

At that time, I am certain I did not understand what he was referring to; but many years later, I figured it out. While peace and love were the theme of the day in the late 1960s and early ’70s, many looked upon close relationships between white and black people with disapproval. He was an attractive Caucasian male with dark hair, understanding eyes, glasses, and a great smile. We were two frizzy-haired, brown-skinned, barefoot monkeys jumping all over him. It was a strange sight to see, for sure, at our local community playground. I loved him so much. I loved that he loved his sister, despite what their mother felt of her relationship with my father and her decision to bear two illegitimate children with that black man as Grandma would call him.

Every couple months, I went through an uninvited painful transformation as my stylist mother, who loved beauty, would aggressively pick through my Michael Jackson–like oversize thick afro and apply a lye-based straightening cream that burned my scalp despite the base of petroleum jelly along my hairline. I tried not to breathe in the toxic fumes that scalded my nasal passages. Once more manageable, she’d part, pull, stretch, roll, and clip each section of hair until my head was throbbing and then sit me under the bowl-shaped hot dryer for an hour, ultimately producing a pretty girl with a bouffant hairstyle like Jackie Kennedy. It couldn’t be farther from the real me, but for Mom, I know it was easier to manage; and of course, I looked a little less black.

It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I allowed my hair to be naturally curly again. Even as a college student, upon regular visits home, one of the first comments out of my mother’s mouth before Hello! or I love you was What have you done with your hair? As an adult years later, I wondered why was my straightened hair more beautiful than my kinks and curls? As I watched the premiere of the movie Good Hair, starring the comedian Chris Rock, I both laughed and cried as I watched this movie capture for me so much of who I was and what I felt I was defined by during my youth.

Although infrequent, there were other times in my childhood when my hair, my skin color, or my race was the topic of conversation. In fourth grade, during February, we studied African American history. We learned that some slave women had children by their white masters, producing an entire generation of multiracial children born into slavery. Some of their mixed children were even passed off as white. Many of these mulattoes went on to become great leaders in history, like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. This prompted various questions from my classmates, including from the boy in the back row, asking, Mrs. T., what do the children of a black slave and her white master look like? A zebra? The entire classroom of children burst out laughing, me included.

At this point, my teacher, rightfully or not, gestured to me, sitting in the front row, to stand and show the young inquisitor just what a mulatto child looked like. Indeed, I did not have stripes. And interestingly, I was not ashamed or embarrassed to be put on display for the benefit of educating my ignorant peers. It was important to me that they knew I was proud of who I was and where I came from.

Years later, when my youngest daughter asked, Mommy, would we pass or would we be slaves? it made me wonder if this was ever a question that ran through my mother’s mind when she straightened our hair. Do my children pass?

Sometime after this, it seemed to be just my mom, dad, and me. I was happy when my sister went to train at a boarding school for ballet in Toronto, Canada. She was a budding ballerina, delicate, beautiful, talented, and tiny, and I always loved watching her on the stage, especially when she played the pint-sized Clara in The Nutcracker at Kleinhans Music Hall. I believe she may have actually been the first professionally paid black ballerina in America to dance the principal role of Clara, and she was only nine years old. The local newspaper said she had effortless and intuitive acting skills and showed real dancing skill.

I danced myself, taking lessons in tap, ballet, and jazz, but I didn’t have the talent nor the passion my ballerina sister had. In fact, during one year-end recital, where I wore a lovely old-style swimsuit with a flared yellow and cornflower blue skirt with polka dots, I had to carry a beach ball as a prop. I distinctly remember losing hold of that silly multicolored inflatable on the stage in front of all those adoring parents in the audience. Still, I wasn’t going to be embarrassed by my fumble, so I just grabbed someone else’s ball and continued on with the show. I don’t think the poor little girl next to me ever knew what happened to her ball. But at the ending pose, when we all proudly held our balls over our heads and smiled to the audience, I wasn’t the one with empty hands. No, no, I was a natural-born star.

My uncle, sadly, chose to prematurely end his life and in such a violent way. He always seemed so happy and content to me. But I cannot begin to know what kind of misery may have driven him to such an end. It’s a selfish act, suicide. I have often thought of committing suicide myself, but while it might end my own pain and suffering, it would leave those around me scarred for life, so how could I? Easier for me, perhaps, but not for them. It was bad enough that I was forced to exist at all. Where is the choice in being brought into existence by another human being? There is none. We are and we exist because someone else created us against our will. I expressed this in a poem I wrote called The Life I Did Not Choose.

I was born into a life I did not choose.

My parents were an unlikely union of white

and black in a discordant time and place.

No church sanctified their matrimony,

so some call my existence illegitimate.

But I am, indeed, here, living with a heart

that beats and lungs that breathe,

like every other human being that did not choose to be.

With much less than some but much more than others,

my journey through growth and development began,

leading ultimately to the time when my wings would

take flight, to soar to heights I could only imagine.

For I was born in the home of the brave and the land of the free,

where brotherhood reigns from sea to sea,

no opportunity unfathomable, no dream too implausible,

where everything is possible and grace is bestowed upon us all.

Though their time has long passed, I intuitively feel,

with the pride and intense love only a creator can know,

that the two souls who conjoined to bring me to life

would do it again despite knowing the arduous,

enduring struggle they would force upon me for all my time.

For every day with gratitude and thanks, I acquiesce to

the futility of it all, refraining from, with all my might,

ending what I did not choose—this life.

But I am . . . and I am thankful. Why?

Because each morning I wake, after passing the night

in an unconscious, unknowing state,

that allows stolen hours to advance my biological age.

My first thought is one of immense joy and acknowledgement that

I have been blessed with another day to provide my testimony,

another chance to witness and experience a connection with the universe,

a hope of simply being in the moment for all it glorious

yet excruciatingly wondrous contradictions.

Thankful for the pain, thankful for the love,

thankful for the opportunities to give, share, and help those in need.

Thankful for the friendships that let me lean

on shoulders stronger than my own,

thankful for the losses that have left me feeling alone.

Thankful for the solitude, thankful for the community,

thankful for all that is good and right and just in a world that is anything but.

Though I did not ask to be and I know not how long I have,

I live, I see, I breathe; and each and every day,

I thank God, my mom and dad for the moment that they all conceived me.

After my uncle died, my mother found her way back into the arms of my father. I suppose this was expected. Still, I am convinced that those years with us together again, while outwardly a happy time for me, would prove to be seriously detrimental to the mental and emotional well-being of my mother. Just two years after their last reunion, my father would sit me down at our favorite spot at the kitchen table, with me on his lap, his arms around my waist, and tears in his eyes. Your mother is taking you away from me again, but I love you. Remember that no matter where you are or where she takes you, I will always love you. I will always be with you, he whispered into my ear.

I held him tightly as I cried. I didn’t understand then, and I didn’t know the reasons why. But away we went again on our own.

3

Love and Passion

I N MY TEN-YEAR-OLD mind, I tried to understand how my mother and father must have been feeling—passionately in love against all odds and then torn apart. Love somehow brought them back together, and then perhaps my father’s inability to commit or remain faithful led to a permanent separation, never to be reconciled. It was traumatic for me; I can only imagine what it must have felt like for my mother.

When we left, we moved to Audubon, a low-income housing community in West Amherst, a suburb of Buffalo. I loved living on Robin Road in the end townhouse. Nearby were walking trails through the forest and a lake around which we often went for a bike ride. There were sandpits, playgrounds, and plenty of other single-parent households in the neighborhood. It was safe, there were lots of kids our age, we enrolled in the local suburban public school, and all the while, I missed my daddy terribly.

Matriculating into an elementary school in the middle of fifth grade was no easy task, but I put on my happy face and my teacher’s-pet persona and quickly found my way into welcoming social settings and the supportive care of my teacher. By the time I got to middle school, I was quite popular and involved in so many clubs, activities, talent shows, and athletics that I barely dwelled on my absent father and sister.

Many of my new friends lived in the exclusive suburb of Williamsville in large homes with pools, with doctor and lawyer parents who drove fine cars. There were times when I looked on them with envy, often wishing that was my life. Over and over again, I would fantasize about a future when I was wealthy, when my children were driven to school in a Mercedes or BMW, wore designer clothes, and lived in a mini-mansion with a tennis court and a pool. In my journal, I vowed to become a lawyer or a doctor just like them; their life seemed so much easier than my own. I promised myself that, no matter what, my children would one day have a better life than me and wouldn’t have to wear worn-out, generic-brand bell-bottoms that rode high above their ankles.

When my sister did return from her time in Canada, things were different between us. We argued incessantly, I suppose as many teen siblings do. I remember one day we were fighting, and she punched me in the middle of my back so hard that I could barely breathe; I don’t remember why though. Kids at school often referred to her as Shari’s sister, even though she was two grades ahead of me. That must have been difficult for her. I know I did not make her transition back into school in the United States an easy one, but I had become accustomed to having Mom all to myself. The idea of sharing a bedroom, my social environment, my popularity, my academic accolades, and my mother’s time, which was minimal at best, was not something I was happy about. Even so, she excelled academically, was elected to the student council, and continued to dance.

These years for the three of us in Audubon were hard on my mother. She was working two jobs and providing piano, dance, and flute lessons for us both, plus paying for our food, shelter, and clothes all without the assistance of the government or a man for the first time in her life. As if it were the one last thing she seemed to retain control over, I remained subjected to the miserable fate of periodic hair straightening. Finally, one day while I was sitting in that chair as she was pulling, tugging, and rolling those curlers, demanding I hand her the next clip to dig into my scalp, I simply refused. That was it. I had enough, enough of the metamorphosis, enough of the disguise masking the person I was, and I just would not hand over one more clip.

Give me the goddamned clip! she yelled with the frustration and anger from years and years of struggle, trying desperately to hang on to any last thread of composure through her anguish.

No! I yelled back. I won’t. I retaliated with my arms firmly crossed.

And with that refusal came the hardest, fastest, most forceful slap to my cheek I have ever experienced. It seemed to me that all the might this petite woman could muster, all the pain she suffered throughout her years alone, all the resentment toward my father propelled through that hand right onto my face, leaving a red mark that would last the rest of the day and an emotional scar that would last a lifetime. Needless to say, that was the last time she ever forcefully laid her hands on my hair or my body and the last time she could make me into the beautiful girl with the straightened hair. Now I was finally strong enough to choose to simply just be me.

I know that on the day she was introduced to Richard, she was financially stressed and at the end of her wits dealing with two hormonal adolescent girls in the house, probably about to have a nervous breakdown. Jo, another single mother in the hood whose children also played in the courtyard, was an extremely attractive Jewish woman who played bridge and dated a tall curly-haired man named Gene. She befriended my mother, and on an occasion out with her, she introduced her to Dick, the man who would become my mother’s second and last husband and a new father to my sister and me.

It was months before we were actually introduced to Richard. He was a traveling account manager and spent many days on the road, driving from one district to another in his territory, spending most of his time in hotels, in cars, or on planes. Somehow he managed to find time to woo and fall in love with my mother and eventually propose to her. He lived two hours away in Syracuse, New York, and on this special weekend, the three of us would travel to stay in his small, two-bedroom bachelor pad. He wasn’t what I would call attractive, yet he had a broad grin, strawberry blond hair, a ruddy complexion, and a deep, booming voice that had me thinking he was Santa’s long-lost brother, minus the beard.

It’s amazing what we do when we are desperately in love. After a long day’s work and managing the two of us all week, my mother found the energy and will to pack our things in an overnight bag, plop us into the back seat of the car, and make the two-hour drive to Syracuse on a Friday night to spend two nights with this man she loved. I can now completely empathize with the exhaustion my mother may have been feeling on this evening, not only with the week but also with life in general.

Having spent years as a single parent of two precious girls working full time, making decision after decision every day all the time on my own without anyone to support me or consult with, striving to keep it all together; to stay organized; to pay the bills on time; to do the grocery shopping, the laundry, the cleaning; to transport the kids to lessons and activities and play dates with friends; to work late while worrying about their welfare at home; to buy clothes that didn’t always look like they just came off the rack of the cheapest thrift store; to simply try to stay alive and sane, I know now why it was so important to get there no matter what, to get into the arms of someone who would say, I love you and Everything is going to be all right. For her, it was imperative that she cultivate this relationship, that she go beyond her limits to be present in the life of this man who showed interest, who cared, who loved, and who genuinely wanted to help my mother have an easier life.

Struggling to keep her eyes open, she drove through the night along the New York State thruway from Amherst to Syracuse. The rain was pounding down; hundreds of lights were intermittently shimmering on the shiny pavement, making visibility poor. The wind was whirring, and the roads were dark and treacherous. Massive semitrailers came speeding past with a force that at one point, perhaps in a moment when she was less alert and dozed off, we swerved suddenly toward the shoulder of the road and nearly smashed into the guardrail. Both my sister and I almost fell off our seats in the back, and my mother seemed to have an expression of sheer horror and